Art History Exam 2

The Bath

1892

Mary Cassatt

Impressionism

The pattern is just as important as the subject matter

• Domestic Scene

The Stone Breakers

1849

Gustave Courbet

Oil on Canvas

Realism

• Young boy who works in the fields and shows his future self doing the same hard and rugged work

• Sympathize with the workers as they could be anyone (generalizing)

• Stonebreakers - break stones to make roads

Rue Transnonain

1834

Honore Daumer

Realism

Lithograph

• Murder of everyone in an apartment building due to police officers believing there was a sniper in the building

The First-Class Carriage

1864

Honore Daumier

Realism

• Element of modernity coming to Paris

• Makes a reference to biblical narrative

• Women’s life of as a mother was supposed to be their most fulfilling moment of society

Still Life In Studio

1837

Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre

Photograph

Daguerreotype

• Unable to take photos of moving objects so, still life is intentional

A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

1863

Timothy O’Sullivan

Photograph

• Moves the bodies of the dead to create a more compelling composition

• An entire battlefield of dead bodies

• Shallow depth of field

Nocturne in Black and Gold (The Falling Rocket)

1875

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Oil on Panel

Impressionism

• Painting can show color at the time, unlike photography

Variations in Flesh Colour and Green: The Balcony

1864-70

Whistler

Impressionism

• Reminiscent of a Japanese woodblock painting; people aren’t shown in their entirety and silk robes

• Whistler had a very broad experience of different forms of art

Impression: Sunrise

1872

Claude Monet

Impressionism

• Brushstrokes are very clear and apparent - Gestural brushstroke

• Up close the painting is unclear but, step back and all the elements of the composition become clear; the ships across the water

Boulevard des Capucines

1873-74

Claude Monet

Haussmannization

Impressionism

• Not interested in Japanese culture; they see a different way to express art

• Shift of Paris from a medieval city to a modern city

The Dance Lesson

1879

Edgar Degas

Impressionism

• Rhythm in the picture; long space, short space, short space

• Idea that you’ve just walked into the room

The Cradle

1872

Berthe Morisot

Impressionism

• Very personal scene

• Mosquito net over the cradle

• A mother’s role

• Idea of a mother looking over a child while in thought

Bar at the Folies-Bergere

1881-82

Edouard Manet

Impressionism

• The woman that is the subject

• The woman is separated from the group mentally even though she is in a room full of other people

• Visual puzzle

Le Moulin de la Galette

1876

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Oil on canvas

Impressionism

• Light filtering through the trees, people go out to hang out and relax, unattended people

• Casual poses

At Moulin Rouge

1892-95

Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec

Oil on canvas

Post-Impressionism

• Snappy, sharp lines

• Part of Paris that has brothels and nightclubs

Starry Night

1889

Vincent Van Gogh

Oil on canvas

Post-Impressionism

• Small city that is contained and packed together

• Gestural brushstrokes

• Swirling sky that is overwhelming

• Curvy lines in the sky vs. stable rectangular lines in the town

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where are we going?

1897

Paul Gaugin

Oil on canvas

Post-Impressionism

• Primitivism and Symbolism

• Relationship between humanity and nature

• Woman plucking fruit

• “Stink of models, professionalism and modern rules”

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

1884-86

Georges Seurat

Oil on canvas

Post-Impressionism

• Pointillism - points added onto the canvas; Divisionism

• An understanding of optics; optical mixing of colors

• Clothing denoting social class and status

Still-Life with Basket of Apples

1890-94

Paul Cezanne

Post-Impressionism

• Structural brushstrokes - dimensionality created by brushstrokes

Burghers of Calais

1884-86

Auguste Rodin

Sculpture

• End of a siege and built to commemorate the heroes that sacrificed themselves

• Burghers - middle class citizens

Red Room (Harmony in Red)

1908-09

Henri Matisse

Oil on Canvas

Post-Impressionism

European Artistic Movement

• Known for red-focused art

• Wanted to paint the way the room feels to him

• Feeling of a room that means home

• Intention of being unclear

Street, Berlin

1913

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Post-Impressionism

European Artistic Movement

• Rigid, mechanization of the men and soft lines of women

• Female prostitutes and male patrons

Improvisation 28 (second version)

1912

Vassily Kandinsky

German Expressionism

Oil on Canvas

European Artistic Movement

• Intersection of colors, lines and forms

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

1907

Pablo Picasso

Oil on Canvas

Post-Impressionism

European Artistic Movement

• Idea that we see an object from multiple different perspectives

• Eye bigger than the other - syphilis

• “Draw as you think, not as you see”

The Portuguese

1911

Georges Braque

Analytic Cubism - breaking down subjects into multiple viewpoints and subjects

European Artistic Movement

• Form is still present

• Man playing a guitar but image is very fragmented

• Reduced color palette; beige, whites, blacks

Still Life with Chair-Caning

1912

Pablo Picasso

Synthetic Cubism - collages and simpler shapes

European Artistic Movement

• Illusion of three-dimensionality

• Looking above and through a glass table and the contents that cover it

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space

1913 (cast in 1931)

Umberto Boccioni

Bronze Futurism

European Artistic Movement

• Ideas pushing forward and pushing against air; contrapposto

Collage Arranged According to the Laws of Chance

1916-17

Jean (Hans) Arp

European Artistic Movement

Dada - anti-traditional art movement

• “Rational thought led to death and destruction”

• Promotion of the irrational and the laws of chance

• Anarchy

Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany

1919-20

Hannah Hoch

Photomontage

Dada

European Artistic Movement

• Political movement against the war and chaos brought to Berlin

• Irrationality of war

• Idea that society needs to be redefined to be more productive

Fountain

1950

Marcel Duchamp

Ready-made

European Artistic Movement

• Artist’s choice of how the object is on display

• Exhibition would accept anything so he pushed that boundary

The Persistence of Memory

1931

Salvador Dali

Surrealism

European Artistic Movement

• Ideas of a world structured by dreams/unconscious mind

• Lack of clarity; opposite of rational understanding

• Melting quality

The Treachery (or Perfidy) of Images

1928-29

Rene Magritte

Surrealism

Trompe l’oeil - way of painting that makes it incredibly realistic

European Artistic Movement

• “This is not a pipe.” in French

• Illusion of reality; realism of the image vs. truth of the words

Objet (Le Déjeuner en fourrure)

1936

Meret Oppenheim

Surrealism

European Artistic Movement

• Fur covered spoon, cup and saucer

• Shifting our expectations of what a cup should feel like; smooth soft instead of furry soft

Suprematist Composition (White Square on White)

1918

Kazimir Malevich

Suprematism

• No meaning

• Move away from symbolic meanings and just see the color and form of white

Composition in Red, Blue, Yellow

1930

Piet Mondrian

De Stijl - the style

• Nothing to comprehend or understand in the painting

• “Reality is opposed to the spiritual”

• Reducing the painting to shape, line, and color

Arrangement in Grey and Black

1871

James Abbot McNeil Whistler

Art from the US

• His mother comes to save him and make him more respectable

• First painting purchased by the Louvre from an American artist

• Patterns serve to flatten the image

Snow in New York

1902

Robert Henri

Art from the US

• Romantic vs. Realistic

• The snow when it is fresh and just fallen vs. when it’s old, melted, mixed with mud and dirty

Foghorns

1929

Arthur Dove

Synesthesia

• Effect of sound on fog, water and the land

• America art lags behind Europe

• You could hear and feel the foghorn on dark night