ARTH 205 Painting Identification Review

Raphael, The School of Athens, 1511

• fresco in the Vatican featuring Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras debating the creation and existence

• includes references to classical sculpture that may have inspired Raphael

• idealized, Grand Style, designo, precise

Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538

• oil paint —> colore, layers, licked surface, colors communicate form

• woman is the passive subject, meant to be viewed by the male viewer

• academic nude, idealized Venus, part of art canon

Johann Zoffany, The Portraits of the Academicians of the Royal Academy, 1771-72

• only features men as the artist, honors the female founders by featuring them on the walls

  • not appropriate to have nude men around women

• women are the subjects of art, not the creators

  • men must be honorable and not sleep around

  • age-restrictions around life drawing classes

• steps of art school

  • young artists started in the Antique School, where they would study sculpture

    • plaster casts, create direct copies of important works

    • students would have to submit a drawing of classical sculpture —> if it received a medal then they could graduate to the Life School

  • Life School = study of anatomy and movement

    • employed physicians and anatomists as teachers, studied preserved specimens and cadavers

    • measuring the ability to create an accurate rendering of the human form

  • Royal Academy, where they can study under masters

• painted in Neoclassical style

Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun, Mary Antoinette and Her Children, 1787

• Louis XVI puts money into the art world to try and please the increasingly angry populous —> more women in the art world (ex. Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun)

• she paints with Rococo style but with a bit more muted tones and subtlety, transitions between Rococo and Neo-Classicism

• painted Antoinette to restore her reputation as a mother and caregiver

  • looking to the future (the kids, and the loss of one)

  • references Virgin Mary, links Marie Antoinette to religious piety

  • Rococo characteristics (soft colors and form, open mouth, luxury)

• Rococo and Neoclassical

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, 1784

• depicts moment before brothers go to a duel

• addresses the balance between duty/honor and emotion/choice

• women in the painting will either lose a husband or a brother

• commissioned by Louis XVI, talking about an oath to Rome over family

• Davide also includes themes of brotherhood and unity that can be read as revolutionary fervor

• a huge painting —> large commission!

• Neoclassical

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, 1793

• depicts Marat’s assassination in his bathtub —> martyred while fulfilling his duties

• in the middle of writing papers to soldiers’ widows

• similar to images of Jesus’s death and sacrifice, as well as Roman sculpture

• painting contemporary events while using past references and ideals (doesn’t feature much blood, dies “well”)

• smaller scale, more intimate

• Neoclassical

Jacques-Louis David, Cupid and Psyche, 1817

• flips the story around: Psyche will wake up and see Cupid at sunrise —> go on a bunch of trials because of Cupid, not her own curiosity

• Cupid is smirking

• Davide references colors of French flag, mustard sheet similar to Napoleon

• Might be Davide saying he is a victim of circumstance, reacting to the major player of the time

  • Reign of Terror + French Gov instability messes up the art market

  • Davide becomes friends with Napoleon —> back to large-scale propagandistic art

    • escapes to Brussels when that fails too

• Neoclassical

Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, 1814

• Neoclassical, Orientalist

• idealized body, her back is too long, looking back at the viewer seductively

  • fetishizes her, made for a European straight male audience

• meshes random icons of various Middle Eastern cultures

Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819

• famous shipwreck (contemporary subject), heavily criticized by the public because the Bourbon Monarchy failed to appoint a good captain

• triangular shape —> eye goes to the man on top of the pile

• not savages eating each other, trying to work together

• Gericult interviewed survivors, sketched the dying men, read reports of the ship

• still idealized bodies, muscular and angular, figures are at life-sized

• emotionally intense —> the sublime, mixture of excitement and horror

  • start at neutral —> experience either pleasure or pain (additive)

  • take away pleasure —> feel delight, at a safe enough distance to not be at risk

• heroic subjects are being heroes because they’re surviving against the impossible

  • human beings struggling to survive, not being martyred or swearing an oath

• Romanticism

Eugène Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus, 1827

• depicts the death of an over-indulgent king; when his populous rebelled, he ordered the death of everything he owned (his wives, animals, etc) and set it to be burned

  • he is waiting for the death to be over, waiting for his time

• similar composition to Wrath of Medusa, a triangle formed by bodies

• reflects views on Arabian culture

  • turbans, elephants, multiple wives, gold, fabric

  • sensuousness, indulgence, evil-ness

• Romanticism, Orientalism

Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830

• second French revolution of 1830, painting was finished the same year

• Marianne symbolizes liberty for the Jacobins (activated allegory)

  • idealized, reflects the ordinary women that fought at the barricades

  • revolutionary cap, symbolizes freedom from slavery

• cross-class unity (factory worker, bourgeois, schoolboy)

• moving into the space of the viewer

• sublime (dead soldiers), not heroic —> willing to fight makes them heroic

• Romanticism

Eugène Delacroix, Women of Algiers in their Apartment, 1834

• maintains European racial hierarchies

  • 3 light-skin women being lazy while a dark-skin woman is active —> believed to be serving them, not explicit though

  • we’re supposed to see them as beautiful because they are white

• uses white models out of convenience

  • Muslim women were often veiling, not allowed to be in a space without a male family member/husband

  • no cultural background to model, depicting figures in art was a taboo in Islamic culture

• smoking a hookah, lounging —> implies luxury and exotic lifestyle, emphasis on lazy

• a harem is fantasy and voyeurism, men can penetrate the female space, very popular to depict in European piece

  • Western artist is allowed to invade these spaces because they believe they hold power over these cultures

• Romanticism, Orientalism

Joseph Mallard William Turner, The Burning of The Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834, 1835

• depicts a socially and politically engaged moment —> conveys meaning

• Ruskin approved of this piece

• Romantic

Gas Lamp, 1848

• fails to pass Sir Henry' Cole’s False Principles of Design

  • form should follow function, look to non-Western design to learn how to create good art that reflects function

  • ornament is secondary to utility

• art isn’t being true to the materials —> metal will get too hot

• imitative —> why is a lamp trying to be a flower

• no symmetry

• overly ornamental, not naturalistic —> flowers aren’t gold

• definitely not Arts and Crafts

Richard Redgrave, Jug, 1847

• follows Cole’s False Principles of Design

• art is being true to the materials —> glass, able to see what’s inside

• not trying to be something it’s not —> looks like a jug

• symmetrical —> everyone gets an equally beautiful view

• simple, naturalistic —> grass at the bottom, flowers blooming on top

• Arts and Crafts

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, 1849

• constrained space, everything pushed to the front, landscape is blocked

• no change in tone —> space isn’t receding

• bright colors, similar to illuminated manuscript

  • used lead white as a base instead of a dead color

• flat, on a grid, straight lines, uniform lighting, pan-focal

• dry appearance of fresco/watercolor

• deviation from chiaroscuro

• Christian iconography that is grounded in reality, there’s a purpose behind it that goes beyond its symbolism

  • lily = Virgin Mary, it’s actively growing, being embroidered carefully by Mary

  • grapevine = symbolizes the blood of Jesus

• modeled by members of the Rossetti family —> not idealized, not professional

• still very clearly unique to the era of photography and science, not copying medieval art

• PRB

John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents, 1849-50

• very accurate, studied in a woodshop, the subjects are modeled after real carpenters

• depicts Jesus, his parents, and John the Baptiste

• criticized = using regular people to depict the holy family, Jesus is young

  • cast redheads, associated with Jewish and Irish —> hated them

  • Jesus has a poke in his hand, dirt under his fingernails

• notches in the table, textiles worn by subjects

• true to the story of Jesus, he’s gross and poor

• PRB

A.W.N. Pugin, Bread Plate, 1850

• functions as a plate, meant to be gathered around

• depicts the wheel that grind wheat, includes the wheat sprigs, cycling of the seasons

• symmetrical, everyone is even, having access to the bread and the words

• Christian imagery of bread

• “waste not, want not”, too much is waste

• encasta process, embedded design within the tile, common medieval technique

• building something to last

• Arts and Crafts

Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1851

• presumed to be lost during WW2

• two men breaking stones to pave for a road, probably will lead to Paris

  • laying groundwork for the modern city

  • can also deconstruct the roads to build barricades

• genre painting, everyday life subject but putting it on the big scale —> reveals the ugliness of society and poverty

• exhibited in the 1851 salon, criticized because the subjects are ugly and boring

  • mad that Courbet made “ugly” art

  • everything is beautiful and idealized —> challenging Romanticism

  • puts working-class on the same level as the emperors and generals

  • blocks the continuation of the landscape —> isolation

• used dirty and muted colors, a gritty quality, trying to reflect the ugliness of the situation

• comments on the modern assembly line, the inescapable generational poverty

  • impossible to get out, only a little bit of sky, no depiction of the road

• able to identify with the working-class, elevating while criticizing, not making fun

  • faces aren’t visible, able to project yourself onto them

  • also critiques the type of anonymous, factorial labor

• Realism

William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853

• depicts a mistress with a gentlemen in a “lover’s den” (men would rent out living spaces for their mistresses, furnishing it with cheap stuff)

  • she has a ring on every finger but her own

• Hunt was the son of a textile manufacturer —> knows what good quality is

• cheap, mass-produced items

  • the piano is veneer, can play itself; not a nice piano

    • sheet music that has a song about wanting to go back to childhood freedom

  • has a beginner, mass-produced embroidery set; already falling apart

  • mass-produced books on the table

  • wearing an English replication of an Indian cashmere shawl

• a bird trying to escape the cat’s paws

  • implicates the man in her suffering (gendered and class restrictions that keep her in these poor conditions)

• narrative includes a mirror (like Manet)

• includes a bunch of surface-level and cheap representations of the natural world

• the moment when she realizes she wants leave and escape out to nature (God)

• Hunt is moralizing the woman and blaming the man, still doing the same thing in real life

  • the model is based off his own mistress

• PRB

Gustave Courbet, The Painter’s Studio: A Real Allegory Summing up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist, 1855

• working class little boy next to a nude woman

• surrounded by the exploited and exploiters (features Charles Baudelaire)

• nude woman in a contemporary setting, she was paid to take off her clothes

• she is painted as allegory in the painting of the painting, but is depicted as a real person in the actual painting

• challenging the audience and the academic nude

• Realism

Oscar Rejlander, The Two Ways of Life, 1857

• depicts the canon idea of how you can well or poorly based on Jesus

• photograph, depicted in a major exhibition

• scandal because it depicted female nudity in photography

  • a real woman, thought to be pornographic

• trying to elevate photography by using fine art tactics

  • can’t escape the association with reality —> crossed line of image vs. reality

• composite image = putting a bunch of images together to create a larger one

  • gluing, planning, math, etc. needed to put together —> very difficult

• exposes the audience’s knowledge that painter’s depicted working class bodies

  • bodies for sale and for consumption

  • medium intercepts this idea

  • plays with anonymity, women themselves are unknown and invisible

Edward Burne-Jones, Sidvonia von Burke, 1860

William Morris, La Belle Iseult, 1858

• some of the only paintings by Morris and Burne-Jones

• reflects his interest in fabric and crafts

• Arts and Crafts but influenced by PRB

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Bocca Baciata, 1859

• not a portrait, a genre painting —> difficult to tell what we’re supposed to be getting from the work

• meant to be for erotic and sensual pleasure, way too scandalous for Victorian England

  • her mouth is the key element to focus on, just kissed

  • her skin is soft, hair is beautiful, toying with a flower

• no moral, meaning, or message, not PBR

• trying to evoke a sensory experience from the work —> synesthesia

• Rossetti’s “Stunner’s Era”

  • finds women he finds beautiful or interesting, uses them as his muse

    • not beautiful by Victorian standards

    • Rossetti pursuing the unique —> trying to find a new type of beauty

  • depicts them as erotic and beautiful, looking at viewer head-on

  • not feminist, still objectifying and depicting them as passive beings

• Aestheticism

James McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl, 1861

• uses a musical reference to tell the viewer that it’s not about the model, it’s about a musical sensation

• orchestra = people playing different instruments in harmony

• think of the piece like you think of music

  • how does the composition make you feel?

  • not narrative, binds music and visual in a synesthetic way

• reuse of white and pale colors, in harmony together

• visible brushstrokes, very loose, almost musically and dancing of the line

• she is very far form the bottom of the painting, similar to PRB and Manet with the flattening of space

  • can’t tell where the rug ends

• Aestheticism

Édouard Manet, Music in the Tuileries, 1862

• depicts a common leisure space for the bourgeois —> groundbreaking to depict this in fine art

• Manet features himself as keeping a distance but still witness to the crowd, the flaneur

• figures are still flat, look like cardboard cutouts, not much depth, figures moving into our space

• frontal figures are easily discernible but the further ones are blurry —> still legible with less brushstrokes (impressionism!)

• mixes social classes (military, bourgeois, lower middle class)

• Impressionism

Édouard Manet, Laure, 1862-63

• depicts Laure, the black model that posed in Olympia

  • either ignored by art historians or faulted for the sexuality for the painting

• poorly rendered, isn’t able to properly depicts her skin and face

• she’s wearing traditionally African clothing but she’s a French woman

• Impressionism, Orientalism

Édouard Manet, Dejeuner sur l’herbe, 1863

• depicts naked women, not nude

  • her park outfit is right in front of her, she just took it off

• massive painting —> elevates to a larger scale, confronts audience directly again

• contrasted by the contemporaneity dressed men

• woman is looking at the viewer, she’s a real life person with a direct gaze

  • extends imaginary space of the painting to the viewer

  • implicates the viewer in their watching

• uses muddier colors to flatten the picture —> trying to expose that painting is paint on a canvas

• bodies are very flat, no modeling (shading) on the body

  • too bright, too pan-focal, very flat

Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863

• references Titian’s Venus D’Urbino in composition

• Olympia has clear contemporary fashion —> not able to be an allegory

  • slippers, kimono, black choker, jewelery

• direct gaze, more stiff and confrontational

• representations of female sex

  • cat doesn’t know the viewer and doesn’t like him

  • maid is bringing flowers

• depicts a prostitute as a nude, not an allusion or allegory

  • common name for prostitute, choker, red hair

  • identifiable woman posing (the model wasn’t a prostitute)

  • covers her genitals with aggressiveness (can be penetrated, autonomous over her body, comes about through the exchange of money and commodity)

  • the viewer is trying to buy sex from her

• realist depiction of modern sexuality while confronting the implied male viewer that is canon in academic art —> modernism!

• Laure (the black model), mostly ignored by art history, otherwise was faulted for the sexuality of the painting

  • France redefining black women as paid women —> in modern clothing, Laure is not posing as a nude (Manet could neverrrrr see her as nude), not meant to sexualize her the way we sexualize Olympia

  • Laure is being paid for her labor, autonomous (also a model), similar to Olympia

  • a black body doesn’t equal a slave body

  • worsened racism through caricatures for the work instead of silencing them

  • both women work to symbolize modernism, (the white woman is not a sexual object, the black woman is not a slave)

Alexandre Cabanel, Birth of Venus, 1863

• passive, coy, but not ashamed of her body

• mythologized, casted as a goddess

• no body hair but lots of head hair

• not based off a certain woman (except they are)

• doesn’t depict an actual vagina (no menstruation, birth, sex)

• innocent and demure but imply eroticism

• painter acts as a middleman between working class woman posing for the painting and the academic nude, removes the humanity from the figure

• protects artists from being accused of impropriety

Jacques-Eugène Feyen, Le Baiser enfantin (The Childish Kiss), 1865

• black women being paid for their labor —> economic independence and autonomy

• dressed in modern clothes

• a black body doesn’t equal a slave body

• Realism

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Beloved, 1865-66

• finds women he finds beautiful or interesting, uses them as his muse

  • not beautiful by Victorian standards

  • Rossetti pursuing the unique —> trying to find a new type of beauty

• depicts them as erotic and beautiful, looking at viewer head-on

• not feminist, still objectifying and depicting them as passive beings

• Aestheticism, Orientalism

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Odalisque, 1870

• exotic and sexual but also lazy, traditional, anti-innovation —> justified colonial imperialism

• trying to make pure beauty —> seeing women as only decorative/beautiful ignores the social constructs of womanhood

  • a limiting type of beauty

• Impressionism, Orientalism

Frédéric Bazille, La Toilette, 1870

• exotic and sexual but also lazy, traditional, anti-innovation —> justified colonial imperialism

• black woman being paid for her labor, autonomous

• a black body doesn’t equal a slave body

• Impressionism, Orientalism

Claude Monet, Impression Sunrise, 1872

• depicts modern industrial port in early morning

• figures are just dark marks, water isn’t blended

• called Impressionists as an insult by a critic

• trying to capture the feeling of a moment; the subject isn’t the port, it’s Monet’s memory of the port

• part of the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874

• painting en plein air to capture changing light and feeling

  • facilitated by the creation of a paint tube

• rejects chiaroscuro and tenebrism

  • light is coming from everywhere

• equalizing brushstrokes —> foreground, middleground, and background are all flat

  • brushstrokes are rough across the canvas

• not trying to pretend it’s not a painting

  • borrowed from 17th cent. Flemish art

• Impressionism

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Loge, 1874

• flaneur has a magnifying goggles

  • not looking at the stage, looking at the stage

  • watching everyone else, able to sink into the background

• the woman at the front is made available to the viewer

  • in the light and facing us, able to see her face and body

  • uses the color of the flowers to look from her breasts to her mouth to her hair

Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ, A Eunuch’s Dream, 1874

• a eunuch is smoking opium, dreaming of a woman he wants to have sex with

  • opium is an illegal product, sold by England to force China to depend on them financially, symbolizes imperialism

• supposed to be in Egypt but includes cacti, an empty desert that represents a bygone era —> not modern, stuck in the past —> modernity is unique to Europe

• Persian rugs, turban, East Asian man, decorative plates —> for a European audience

  • mixes up cultural symbols

• idea that eunuchs served a harem but they couldn’t be sexually viable —> castrated

• little cherub is holding a knife —> the man can’t fulfill his sexual desires

  • a red handprint by the artist’s signature implies that he is the one castrating the figure

  • sinister and violent

• Orientalism

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold; The Falling Rocket, 1875

• depicting fireworks show, depicted in an art gallery with electric lighting overhead

• Ruskin doesn’t like this piece, publishes critique in newspaper —> Whistler sues for libel

  • he believes people are being exploited for their money, not okay for social/moral good

• Whistler wins the case because he’s witty and logical

  • says they’re paying for the knowledge of art, it took him 2 day to paint but years to learn how

  • becomes bankrupt afterwards

• tanks Ruskin’s career, was a super respected art critic

  • compared the piece to J.M.W. Turner (which he liked because it depicted a socially and politically engaged moment)

  • believes art should have a moral or message, depicting random fireworks is useless

  • both are similar in art style, not about the visual technique but the meaning

• Aestheticism

Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877

• from an affluent family, free from financial restraint, donated his collection and works to state

• captures Parisian renovated intersections

  • boulevards are widened, cobblestones carefully placed, streetlamps

• new apartment buildings and commercial spaces on street level

• very large 2x3 meters —> immersive

• pays attention to fashion because it identifies social class

• (mustaches = bourgeois masculinity, bow tie and top hat, veil covers her eyes, wearing pearls)

• background includes presence of working class (woman wearing an apron, man carrying a ladder, women appearing by themselves on the way to work)

• captures different classes interacting in public

• umbrellas are all the same between figure (modernity and manufacturing), everyone can get the same thing

• captures the impression of a fleeting moment and everyday life but still intentionally composed

• Impressionism

Édouard Manet, Café Concert, 1878

• depicts nightlife space, very new for the time

  • singing, dancing, drinking, community, brings people from social classes together

• day starts for some (barmaids), ends for others (customers)

• figures are next to each other but not interacting

• left-hand woman

  • plainly dressed, sitting alone with a beer, slumped and smoking, a woman all by herself —> working class, finished the day

  • presence of women by themselves in public —> anxieties (are they there for entertainment, sex work, or labor?)

• barmaid in the back is taking a break by taking a swig of beer

  • slightly flushed, probably being called over by other patrons

• top-left woman

  • dancer and entertainer

  • depicts her reflection in a mirror —> viewer needs a second to realize the man is the only one looking at her, also flattens the perspective and reduces depth

• right-hand man

  • classic bourgeois (top hat, monocle, suit)

  • the flaneur, observing without being questioned of his intentions

• Impressionism

Mary Cassatt, In the Loge, 1878

• woman projecting a gaze with the goggles

• her figure is more enshrouded

  • side profile, wearing black and mostly hidden, holding a fan that can cover herself

  • wearing yellow gloves

• a man looking at her, climbing over the side of the theater

  • though she’s projecting a gaze, she is still victim of a gaze

• Cassatt was blocked from going to events that the flaneur would be able to

• Impressionism

Berthe Morisot, The Wet Nurse, 1880

• Renoir depicted the ideal mother breastfeeding her child

  • limits women from having rights and trying to leave the house

  • naturalize the role of woman to try and keep them from hiring wet nurses and maintain autonomy

• autonomy of the mother implied by the wet nurse breastfeeding instead of the mother

• Morisot is a mother, capturing the woman that lets her be an artist

  • the daughter is well-rendered while the wet nurse’s facial features are obscured and dissolves into brushstrokes

• giving a sense of light

  • the should has lighter brush strokes —> gives impression that there’s light there

• blotchy patches that are unblended

• Impressionism

Édouard Manet, Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882

• the viewer is male because it’s reflected in a mirror

• woman is a bartender, selling liquor

  • implication of her selling herself

  • reference with choker

• her body is similar to objects around her

  • flowers on her breast similar to ones in vases

  • her waist in a corset is similar to the bottles

• Impressionism

William Morris, Strawberry Thief, 1883

• inspired by birds in his garden, lightheartedness

• designed by Morris but there’s a whole team behind him

  • someone to carve the design in the block, someone to discharge the indigo to print

• Arts and Crafts

Paul Sérusier, The Talisman, 1888

• challenged academy-ism

  • idealized beauty, copying masters, emphasis on line and form, canon and tradition

• started by making smaller paintings that were personal, intimate, and contemplative

  • reflected the unique painter, not the outside world

  • represents the painter’s imagination and spirituality, very ethereal and cerebral

• embrace the painting-ness of painting: use thick paint, flat

• curvilinear patterns

• Nabis, Cloisonnism

May Morris, Maids of Honour, c. 1890

• labor-intensive art (embroidered on mesh, literally nothing revealed on the back)

• sold cheaper versions for different audiences

• socialist part of their art

• Arts and Crafts

William Morris, William Harcourt Hooper, and Edward Burne-Jones, A Dream of John Ball, Kelmscott Press, 1892

• high quality, expensive but meant to last

• made on vellum, a long-lasting medieval paper type

• Morris acting against wastefulness of the goods

• his goods are meant to be shared (large books)

• Arts and Crafts

Maurice Denis, L'Échelle dans le feuillage, or Arabesques poétiques pour la décoration d'un plafond, 1892.

• very large —> immersive

• repetitive subjects

• Denis’s piece is mystical, representing a musical motif that symbolizes passion of music (made for a musician)

• wealthy art patrons commissioned the Nabis to decorate their homes

  • painters become decorators

• more mystical, intimate, and personal subjects

• Nabis

Paul Gauguin, Where do We Come From? What Are We? Where are We Going?, 1897

• believed the best art was derived from “primitive” societies because they were the most pure form of society

  • the simplicity in their art was naive —> spiritual and pure

• depicted women in a primitive state, among nature, very simple form and design

• Gauguin sees “artifacts”, leaves his family for Tahiti because he wants to live in a simple paradise

  • Tahiti is a colony, he doesn’t care, instead trying to preserve the fantasy

• depicts nude women (despite the missionary presence, women were no longer naked and were instead converted and clothed)

  • he was attracted to their nude bodies —> more sexually available for his fantasy

  • free from European oppressive society

• trying to depict symbols of religion and spirituality of Tahitian culture —> failing

  • a figure picking in apple (like Eve in Eden) = Tahiti is a sort of paradise for him

• features a Peruvian mummy but depicts her like she’s Tahitian

• pulls from different cultures wildly, mixing references like an idiot

• influences an entire generation of artists in primitivism

• trying to find a culture (ex. Tahiti) that’s closer to nature —> purity

  • believed secularity in France was ruining society

  • still believed to be inferior

  • value a naive way of seeing through feeling

  • art doesn’t have to be narrative, only the way its forms are organized

• the noble savage = primitive people are uncorrupt and pure because they are savage and not modern

• Cloisonnisme, Orientalism, Primitivism, Symbolism

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

• Picasso was part of the Spanish Art Academy, works among the avant-garde in Paris

• cubism

  • new way of looking at form on a 2d canvas

  • the first experiment into cubism, worked with Braque

  • complete flattening of 3d space —> no ground

  • color blocking, direct application of color, essentialized geometric forms

• women’s faces are based on African mask —> otherness that can be uncomfortable

  • academic nude is meant to cause pleasure, this only causes fear

• bodies are sharp, angular, color blotted; can’t get a sense of their femininity

  • look more aggressive and active in their bodies

  • their eyes are wide and alert

  • viewer doesn’t want to/can’t hold them

• female sex workers are a source of anxiety for STDs

  • these subjects are often depicted with animalistic/scary features

  • almost featured a student doctor checking them for venereal disease

• Cubism

Henri Matisse, The Blue Nude, 1907

• accused of deliberate ugliness when exhibited at the Salon

• independent figure, not classically trained

• features consistent with academic nude

  • visually accessible nude female body, given to the viewer as an object to observe

  • ambiguous gaze

  • in an idyllic setting, not a clear time

• diverges from academic nude

  • very flat, difficult to tell what direction we’re watching from

  • overuses the arabesque line to the point that it’s horrifying

  • muscular, short hair —> implies masculinity and activity (counters passive languidness)

  • visual brushstrokes, low-finish, not naturalistic

  • leaves parts of the canvas exposed

• Fauvism