Lesson 3: How Do I Study Art
Art Movements
- they are usually named with the suffix "ism" at the end
- suggests a certain attitude toward painting or any art-making
ART HISTORY
1. Prehistoric
- cave paintings, venus figurines which are considered portable sculptures
- Greek standard of beauty: the birth of "classical" age.
- romans: the competitor of Greece: created realistic sculptures of human
figure
2. Middle Ages (AKA Medieval Period)
- the "death" of the artistic freedom due to canonical standards of visual
interpretation
- the rise of Gothic art
- Popular art: stained glass windows and illuminated manuscripts
3. Renaissance
- revival of artistic genius
- the term "renaissance man" was derived
- because of man's intellectual achievements in the arts and science
- the time of "masters"
- Donato di Niccolo de Betto Bardi "Donatello"
- an Italian sculptor
- used his knowledge to develop an Early Renaissance style of sculpture
- his work "David" was the first freestanding nude male sculpture
- Leonardo da Vinci
- an Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer
- his "Last Supper" and "Mona Lisa" are among the most widely popular and
influential paintings of the Renaissance
- Michaelangelo
- an Italian renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet
- the "frescoes" on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Vatican) are probably
the best known of his works
4. Baroque
- grandiose and omate art
- artistic innovation: "spotlight effect"
- called CHIAROSCURO
- extreme usage, it is called tennebrism
- Caravaggio
- an Italian artist.
- AKA Michaelangelo Merisi
- works:
- The Conversion of St. Paul (second version)
- Velasquez
- a Spanish artist
- AKA Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velasquez
- famous for engaging fresco painters to decorate the ceilings of the
apartments
- works:
- Las Meninas
- Poussin
- a French artist and draftsman
- AKA Nicolas Poussin
- founded the French Classical tradition
- specializes in history paintings
- depicting scenes from the Bible
- ancient history
- mythology
- works:
- Adoration of the Golden Calf
5. 19th Century - "-ism" : art movements
- emergence of "isms"
- Neoclassicism: Greek & Roman Classics revived
- Romanticism, Realism, Art Nouveau, Impressionism
- Photography comes into the scene
- Post-impressionism, early expressionism, and symbolism
- Neoclassicism
- emerged as a Western CULTURAL MOVEMENT in the DECORATIVE and VISUAL ARTS,
LITERATURE, THEATRE, MUSIC, and ARCHITECTURE that drew inspiration from the art and
culture of CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY
- Johann Zoffany (1782): (work)
- Charles Towneley in his sculpture gallery
- Romanticism
- an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe
- purpose: to advocate for the importance of
- subjectivity
- imagination
- appreciation of nature in society and culture in response to;
- Age of Enlightenment
- Industrial Revolution
- Caspar David Friedrich (1818): (work)
- Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
- Realism
- emerged in France in the 1840s
- around 1848 Revolution
- realists rejected Romanticism
- dominated French literature and art
- since the early 19th century
- James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1872): (work)
- Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge
- Art Nouveau
- an international style of art, architecture, and applied art
- esp. the decorative arts
- often inspired by NATURAL FORMS
- sinuous curves of plants and flowers
- G. Hirth (1896): (work)
- Otto Eckmann
- Impressionism
- a style of painting developed in France
- mid-to-late 19th century
- characterizations of the style include;
- small
- visible
- brushstrokes
- that offer the bare impression of
- form
- unblended color
- emphasis on the depiction of natural light
- Claude Monet (1875): (work)
- Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son
- Post-Impressionism
- emerged as a reaction against impressionists'
- concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and color
- emphasis on abstract qualities or symbol
- Henri Rousseau (1892): (work)
- The Centenary of Independence
- Early Expressionism
- usually has;
- extreme angles
- flattened forms
- garish colors
- distorted views
- an international movement in art, architecture, literature, and performance
that flourished between 1905 and 1920
- esp. in Germany and Austria
- Edvard Munch (1893): (work)
- The Scream
- Symbolism
- both an artistic and a literary movement
- suggested ideas through symbols
- emphasized the meaning behind the;
- forms
- lines
- shapes
- colors
- Paul Gauguin (1880): (work)
- Still-Life with Fruit and Lemons
- Photography
- the art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light
- either;
- electronically - means of an image sensor
- chemically - means of a light-sensitive material (photographic film)
6. 20th Century
- art become more non-representational
- type of art that does not attempt to depict an accurate
representation of visual reality
- garish colors explored Fauvism
- radical use of unnatural colors that separated color from its usual
representational and realistic role
- abstracted sculptures emerged
- fully emerged in the early 20th century
- when a decline in the appreciation of Realism became more common
among Avant-garde artists of the period
- cubism, futurism, constructivism, expressionism
- cubism
- diff. views of the subjects were brought together in the same
picture
- futurism
- movement in art, music, and literature begun in Italy (1909)
- marked esp. by an effort to give formal expression to the
dynamic energy and movement of mechanical processes
- appear fragmented and abstracted
- constructivism
- focused on industrial production
- used stripped down, geometric forms and modest materials
- expressionism
- artistic style in which artist seeks to depict not objective
reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events
arouse within a person
- Mondrian's purely geometric art
- he created a style based on pure geometry
- used only straight lines and rectangles (harmony & order)
- primary colors:
- red, blue, and yellow
- (the most basic and pure)
- white, black, and gray
- (three noncolors)
7. Art During the Wars
- dadaism: the art movement that defies logic
- nonsense was the ultimate political tool to smash existing power
structures and artistic norms.
- surrealism: stepping into the dreamworld
- movement in visual art and literature
- the movement represented a reaction against what its members saw as
the destruction wrought by the "rationalism"
- had guided European culture and politics in the past
- had culminated in the horrors of WW1
- American art blossoms
- blossomed during the wars as artists responded to the social upheaval
- using their work to express political messages, national identity,
and emotional resilience
- this period saw innovation in styles
- abstract expressionism
- (mobile sculptures) and color field
- kinetic art forms
- often suspended in the air
- pioneered by Alexander Calder
- mobile sculptures and (color field)
- exemplified by Mark Rothko
- emphasizes large, flat areas of color to evoke deep emotional
responses
8. 20th Century to Contemporary
- highly experimental and radical
- avant-garde
- refers to innovative, experimental art
- challenges traditional norms and pushes boundaries in form,
style, or subject matter
- pop art defines consumer culture; dominated mostly by works of Andy Warhol
- a movement that embraced consumer culture and mass media
- Minimalism: glorifying the simplest art elements
- emphasized clean lines, geometric forms, and the use of industrial
materials
- removing personal expression or narrative
- birth of conceptual art
- focuses on the idea or concept behind the artwork rather than its
aesthetic or physical form
- photography is further developed which paved way to art movement,
Photorealism
- advances in photography led to photorealism
- artist creates hyper-realistic paintings
- neo-expressionism or new expressionism is characterized by strong subject
matter
- revived emotional intensity
- using bold colors and dramatic forms
- contemporary art: a very diverse art scene; the rise of appropriation,
photography-derived works, graphic style of art, experimental works, multimedia and
multi-modal art
- diverse and eclectic era
- it features appropriation, digital art, multimedia works, and
experimental forms, reflecting global and cultural shifts
ART CRITICISM
- artworks are didactic in nature
- they demand a response
- as mentioned by James Elkins in the essay "What Happened to Art Criticism"
- a discipline of the arts that seems to be both healthy and dying
METHODS IN READING ART
1. FORMALISM and STYLE
- basically gives importance to the formal qualities
- (art elements, materials, and design principles)
- Roger Fry
- major purveyor of this thinking
2. ICONOGRPAHY
- focuses on the subject matter
- answer questions like:
- who is the person the artist painted
- what does it represent
- why did the artist choose this image and;
- what for
3. CONTEXTUAL APPROACHES
- context becomes an important factor in criticizing artworks
- Marxism
- about an art in relation to economics
- orientalism
- colonialism
- racial iconography
- feminism
- gender
4. BIOGRAPHY and AUTOBIOGRAPHY
- considers the life and context of the artist
- based on the assumption that the artist's life, beliefs, choices, and
personality
5. SEMIOTICS
- from the Greek word "sema" = sign
- assumed to be composed of a set of signs that may have significant cultural
and contextual meanings beyond itself.
6. PSYCHOANALYSIS
- Sigmund Freud
- one is concerned about the unconscious mind in relation to the artist, the
viewer, and the cultural context
7. AESTHETICS and PSYCHOANALYSIS
- individual notion of what is considered acceptable, beautiful, or
attractive
