ap art history

Hunters in the Snow

Two identifiers: Pieter Brugel, oil on wood

Theme: mundanity in the winter, the contrast between human joy and despair in the weather

Visual elements:

• Hunters evidently labored from the hunt, exhausted that their hunt was unsuccessful

• People ice skating and enjoying the winter

• Person helping another on a sled

Contextual elements

• Brugal was inspired by his trip to the alps

Shibboleth

Two identifiers: Doris Salcedo, installation, contemporary

Theme: immigration, unwanted immigrants in Europe, plight of the immigrant, ethic separation

Visual details:

• The crack invades the art museum, alluding to the unwanted nature of an immigrant

• The mesh covers the crack, alluding to the mesh present at borders that keep immigrants out of Europe

Contextual:

• Doris is a Columbian immigrant

No Crying Allowed in the Barber Shop

Two Identifiers: Pepon Osorio, installation

Theme: machismo/Puerto Rican masculinity and culture

Visual details:

• Items like a pool table or leaf vines do not belong in a barbershop and are there anyway, representing how the barbershop is more than where these men get their hair cut. It’s where they forge social and cultural belonging.

• To allude to his Nuyerican background, there are several Puerto Rican flags around the shop as well as cars

• There are depictions of men crying plastered on the mirror which challenge the idea that crying is not allowed, challenging the macho man idea

Contextual:

• Pepon cried in a barbershop as a kid, but knew he couldn’t because the barber was a masculine rite of passage

• Pepon moved from New York to Puerto Rico

Fallingwater

Two identifiers: Frank Lloyd Wright, Modernism

Theme: the harmony of human architecture with nature.

Function: home

Visual details:

• The house cooperates with the stream banks through the cantilevered ledges, making the surrounding Bear Run even more beautiful

• It seems as though the waterfall is flowing through the house

Contextual details:

• Wright is a transcendalist; he wanted nature and human architecture to work together to enhance nature

Forbidden City

Two identifiers: Ming dynasty, made of marble wood and stone

Function: home for Chinese emperors, basically a micro-city

Visual details:

• Large architectural complex

• Divided into an inner and outer court

• Symmetrical plan

Contextual details:

• Palace of Heavenly Purity and Hall of Supreme Harmony - PHP is in the inner court where domestic duties of emperors are performed, and HSH is in the outer court where state affairs of men are taken care of

• Where people live is determined by social status

Athenian Agora

Two identifiers: Archaic-Hellenistic Greek, marble

Function: public space

Theme: place of democracy and socializing

Visual details:

• Large open spaces for public gatherings

• Stoa: built for business and civic gatherings

Contextual: used to be a burial site, gradually converted into a democratic area, marketplace, etc.

Pantheon

Two identifiers: Imperial roman, concrete with stone facing

Function: created to celebrate Rome and its power but also worship the gods

Visual details:

• ideals of perfection to suit the gods: perfect geometry in terms of shapes especially squares and circles, symmetrical reliefs, rotunda is so perfect you can fit a sphere

• Breaks conventions by having wide open enclosed spaces with rotunda

Seagram building

Two identifiers: Ludwig Mies van der Rone

Function: corporate building

Theme: perfection

Visual elements:

• draws from the perfect classical Parthenon to create fluted columns

• Perfectly symmetrical throughout

• Open space in front of building to allow people a public space

Context:

• huge fan of minimalism and less is more