Identities Critical Views

'a woman's art and only fit for lazy well-to-do people'

Michelangelo on oil painting (i.e. not physically exhaustive fresco work)

'Portraits are not just likenesses but works of art that engage with ideas of identity as they are perceived, represented, and understood in different times and places'

West

Portraits are 'products of prevailing artistic fashions and favoured styles, techniques, and media.'

West

'in terms of representation, it is beauty [...] when young, and the loss of beauty when old.'

Eldholm on how women are represented in art

'The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him'

Friedrich

"A well-tended and ornate temple is without a doubt the foremost and primary ornament of the city."

Alberti (potentially can be related to the Suleymaniye Mosque)

Art is 'always affected by its context'

Schapiro

'A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies.'

Berger

'[In art,] men act and women appear'

Berger

'A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude'

Berger

'To be naked is to be oneself'

Berger

'Together artists produced work that exposed and addressed overt racism as it occurred on the streets and in the media - often by re-telling historical and current events from perspectives that were unacknowledged by the mainstream'

Andrews

'It creates a sense of self-esteem because it helps you understand that African society produced some great civilisations'

Soyinka on Benin Plaques

'Brass was the preferred medium of the royal art of Benin because its redness was beautiful and menacing, with an authority and a fiery presence that makes this art live'

Jones on Benin Plaques

'puzzled to account for so highly developed an art among a race so entirely barbarian'

Read being racist about Benin Bronzes

'western racist ideas of African peoples didn't compute with the subtle sophistication of the art they saw'

Sum Won on Benin Bronzes

'art should be made, in a spirit of community and faith, by anonymous craftsmen'

Ruskin (not on Benin Bronzes but can be easily linked)

"As long as I live I will have control over my being"

Gentileschi

"A painter whose life and work are a challenge to humanist constructions of feminine education and deportment."

Chadwick on Gentileschi

"a direct confrontation which disrupts the conventional relationship between an 'active' male spectator and a passive female recipient."

Chadwick on Judith Slaying Holofernes

"She embodied virtues such as chastity and fortitude, and was associated with the Virgin Mary."

Mann on Judith in the Bible

"I think there is a kind of connection between architecture and geometry - and between calligraphy and geometry"

Hadid

"It has lumpy and clumsy bits and collisions of detail that don't seem intended."

Sum Won on Maxxi

"MAXXI supersedes the notion of the museum as an 'object'"

Sum Won on Maxxi

'a new fluid kind of spatiality'

Sum Won on Hadid

"It melts, it slides, it wooshes, it juts, it moves."

Yentob on Heydar Aliyev Centre

"The building blurs the conventional differentiation between architectural object and urban landscape"

Sum Won on Heydar Aliyev

"vapid formalism placating and promoting a dubious regime... manipulation of clichéd shapes relying too heavily upon computer generation at the expense of real architectural thought."

Curtis on the Heydar Aliyev Centre

"an antimonumental monument devoted to culture not government"

Sum Krittick on Heydar Aliyev Centre

it is "named after a former KGB supremo whose son today presides over a dictatorship".

Olyacto on Heydar Aliyev Centre

"all form and no structure".

Sum Krittick comparing Heydar Aliyev Centre to Orientalist nudes

'Her body and experiences were used metaphorically to debate wider issues that were central to mexican cultural politics'

Herrera on Kahlo

"In her self-portraits she [...] [is] insisting on the subjective viewpoint of a specific woman."

Deffebach on Kahlo

"Spontaneous, naïve at times, and distinctly original, the tradition of modern Latin American popular portraiture is rooted in the colonial experience."

Oettinger

"A lot of black art that came before was set up to critique the system... I just wanted to try to be who I am."

Ofili

"We're the voodoo king...I'm giving them all of that"

Ofili on black identity in his art

'a modern pieta'

Pawlik on No Woman No Cry

'betwixt and between'

Ridley on the gender fluidity of Peter Pan (in relation to I am a Man)

'What he understands is that being a man today [...] is organic, not fixed, an ongoing fragile building of identity'

Cordon on Perry

'default man'

Perry on Huhne's status as a straight white middle-class guy

'classical invisible'

Perry on the beauty of Samian-inspired pots drawing the viewer in

'he had the elusive charm that inspired affection and the famous 'Nelson touch' that gained him universal respect and a string of unequalled victories at sea.'

Hood on Nelson

'public monuments... were in reality the final product of the enlightenment notion that sculpture could personify history and morality in the image of the individual 'hero'"

Le Norman-Romain on public monuments (as relating to Nelson's Column)

"It is a mere portrait statue, with no attempt to raise the subject above a literal fidelity of figure and costume."

Sum Won on Nelson's Column

"England expects that every man will do his duty"

Nelson

'a unique series of rhythms'

Sum Krittick on what Sutherland looks for in each picture

Demonstrating 'the strength of the human spirit'

Sum Krittick on Sutherland

'sensation, with fact bringing up the rear'

Cooke on Sutherland at his best

"In painting, you have to destroy in order to gain"

Sutherland

"It is indeed tempting to call this the first genre painting - a painting of everyday life - of modern times".

Harbison on the Arnolfini Portrait

Arnolfini is a legal contract of marriage

Panofsky

Arnolfini depicts a betrothal

Hall

Arnolfini was meant to further Arnolfini's status as a merchant

Carrol

Arnolfini has no symbolism, is simply social realism

Bedaux

Arnolfini is a memorial for a dead wife (the woman was painted from Van Eyck's memory or a description from the husband)

Koster

Arnolfini was gift to Arnolfini showing off his wealth and posterity

Martens

Who argues that Van Eyck pays as much attention to earthly objects as divine ones in the Ghent Altarpiece?

Pacht

Who theorises that the central figure in the upper register of the Ghent Altarpiece is the Holy Trinity combined into one person?

Lane

'in it [the ghent altarpiece], the line between representation and reality dissolves'.

Schrauzer