Final Exam ARTH 206 Maddox - 18th and Early 19th Century Art study guide

Although Enlightenment philosophies had different attitudes and opinions, many were unified by shared thoughts about the nature humanity, of the role of the state and the remedy for a failed state. Explain. What optimistic view did they share regarding the behavior of humanity if freed from their "past religious and political shackles"?

Men and women could/would act rationally and morally. Enlightened thinking is marked by conviction that humans are not superstitious beings marked by God or the aristocracy.

What are the marks of the Rococo style?

Pastel colors, dainty figures, curving forms, lighthearted mood.

The pictorial themes in the Rococo residences are often drawn from what source?

Classical love stories.

Jean Antione Watteau's The Signboard of Gersaint - what conventional momento mori and symbols of vanitas are found?

Momento mori: clock above king's portrait surmounted by an allegorical figure of fame and sheltering a pair of lovers (mortality).

Vanitas: destroyed straw, young woman & 2 gentlemen gazing in a mirror, symbolize fragility of human life, transience, and passage of time.

What was the name of the new type of painting created by Jean-Antoine Watteau's Le Pélerinage á I'île do Cithère?

Elegant outdoor entertainment.

For what reasons did the Rococo fall out of favor in the last quarter of the 18th century?

With the rise of interest in neoclassicism, people sought intellectual meaning in art. Style was empty, immoral, and self-indulgent.

Explain: "The artists and intellectuals who found inspiration in the classical past were instrumental in the development of neoclassicism, which was both a way of viewing the world and a visual style."

They were drawing inspiration from the grecco-roman era.

What was Johann Joachim Winkelmann's opinion of the French Rococo style? Explain his thoughts concerning Greek art and why he is important for the history of art.

Greek art: it's decadent and modern artists could only claim their status as legitimate artists by imitating Greek art.

Importance: he analyzed the history of art for the first time as a succession of period styles, which later became the norm for art history books.

Anton Raphael Meng's Parnassus is important for being the first true manifestation of what style?

Neoclassicism

Who was the leading neoclassical sculptor of the late 18th and 19th centuries?

Antonio Canova

William Kent's design for the garden of Chiswick House is different from the typical Baroque garden in what way?

It abandoned the regularity and rigid formality of Baroque Gardens with its winding paths, a lake with cascade, irregular planting of shrubs, and other effects the imitated the appearance of a natural, rural landscape.

Explain the way in which the Park at Stourhead, designed by Henry Flitcroft and Henry Hoare, manifests both Neoclassical and Romantic features.

Neoclassicism: classically inspired temples

Romantic: gratos, love for exotic, mixture of styles & cultures that combine them both

How is William Hackwood's design for Josiah Wedgewood, "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" connected with Benjamin Franklin and the women's suffrage movement in the U.S.?

He sent copies of the medallion to Ben Franklin for the Philadelphia Abolition Society as it represented the abolishment of slave trade. The U.S. woman's suffrage movement later used it to represent a women in chains with the motto "Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?"

Hogarth "hoped to create a distinctively British style of art." Explain. What trend in British art does this style reflect?

Satire

Improvement of society

In Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures by Angelica Kaufmann can be found in what Neoclassical characteristics?

Pyramidal structure, balance, historical figure, idealization of figures, a moralizing character.

In opposition to Enlightenment "faith in reason and empirical knowledge," the proponents of Romanticism were attracted to what forms of experience?

Restraint and dramatic.

As exemplified in The Nightmare, Fuseli rejected what Enlightenment characteristics in favor of what themes?

Rationality by depicting intentionally irrational subjects such as the super natural and the world of dreams. Reason in favor of human imagination.

For William Blake, what did rules of constrain, prevent and what were his ideas concerning the difference between the imagination and reason?

Rules hinder rather than aid creativity. The imagination provided access to the higher realm of the spirit while reason was confined to the lower world of matter.

Who is one "of the first French artists to treat the lives of women and children with sympathy and to honor the dignity of women's work"? He did so through his depiction of what subjects?

Chardin

Young mothers, governesses, and kitchen maids

The Drunker Cobbler and The Village Bride by Jean-Baptiste Greuze can be considered a manifestation of Diderot's concept of "middle-class drama" and "middle tragedy." Explain what these terms refer to and in what way they were manifested in these works.

Drama bourgeois = middle class satire, based upon theories of French essayists (between comedy and tragedy).

Social abuses, but with controversial happy endings.

Stage like scenes where drama is under a spotlight, both highly dramatic and emotional.

Study the information of Goya's The Third of May presented in the text as well as in lectures. Learn the content, formal features, and reason Goya painted the scene. What about the work marks it as Romantic in style?

Painted the scene to warn men never to do what they did again.

Romantic: sensational, current event, loose brushwork, lifelike poses, unbalanced composition, and dramatic lighting.