Ch 4 Pt 2 Notes
4.1 Introduction to Art
Key figures and early theorists in the artistic climate discussed: Aleksandr Rodchenko (active across painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, and graphic arts) and Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944, Russia; worked in Germany and France).
Rodchenko sought independence of the artistic process and embraced a constructive, self-referential approach to making art.
Kandinsky wrote the influential treatise Concerns- ing the Spiritual in Art (1912). It explored color theory in relation to music, logic, human emotion, and the spiritual underpinnings of abstraction; the abstractions he pursued were rooted in the cultural context of Russia’s icons and folk imagery.
These figures illustrate the atmosphere of experimentation that characterized the period: a seedbed for new ideas and modes of working across media.
4.5 Styles of Art (overview of how styles are defined and analyzed):
Style can reflect: (a) shared principles of form and design within a culture or era, (b) a movement or group of artists with common elements, materials, or beliefs, and (c) the visual characteristics of an individual artist’s work.
A stylistic analysis examines artistic elements, traces how an artist or group uses them, and situates them within time, culture, or region.
Styles can be examined along three broad categories: Period styles, Regional styles, and Formal styles (the latter often called “isms”).
Visual approach and historical context:
Artists may align with or diverge from naturalism depending on the expressive goals or cultural context.
Artistic change is typically evolutionary and reactionary to current cultural thinking and circumstances; artists may push in one direction or alter course to convey ideas more effectively.
The relationship between style and culture implies that conventions of representation emerge from broader cultural currents.
Figures referenced:
Figure 4.11: Angel of the Last Judgment (Wassily Kandinsky, as referenced in the text).
Figure 4.12: Red Spot II (Wassily Kandinsky).
4.5.1 Cultural Style: an exploration of how style arises from culture and place, with several regional exemplars.
4.5.1.1 Ancient Near East
Example works: Standard of Ur (c. ), a wooden inlaid box illustrating war and peace scenes with iridescent shell, red limestone, and lapis lazuli.
Features: Figures show enough naturalism to read the human form, yet remain static; a composite view (portions of the body shown in profile and others in frontal view) is used to convey details not visible in pure profile.
The Stele of Music (c. ) depicts Gudea with attendants and musicians to mark temple construction.
Sargon II relief (c. 722–705 BCE) shows continued use of conventions of representation across centuries in the same region (modern-day Iraq).
Concept: Conventions of representation in the Ancient Near East emphasize dignity and significance; when naturalism increases, it often serves to convey power, musculature, and stature (hierarchical proportion).
Abstraction occurs as a deliberate device in these conventions, but it is not a reactionary modern movement in this context.
Key terms: composite view; hierarchical proportion.
4.5.1.2 Ancient Greece and Rome
Greek Classical tradition: Late Classical (400–323 BCE) and Hellenistic (323–31 BCE) periods; the High Classical era produced monumental works (Parthenon-related architecture on the Acropolis). The Greek approach to ideal form influenced Roman art, which also drew on classical precedents while developing its own cultural ideals.
Key shifts: From the calm, balanced ideals of High Classical to the more dynamic, expressive, and dramatic Late Classical and Hellenistic periods.
Rome’s depictions often combined admiration for Greek classical ideals with distinct Roman values: worldliness, expansion, engineering prowess, ingenuity, and strong individualism.
Veristic portraiture (veristic heads) emphasized truthful, unidealized likenesses, especially during the Roman Republic (509–27 BCE). In the Early Imperial era (27 BCE–197 CE), imperial portraiture often returned to idealization for political propaganda (e.g., Augustus as a youthful, heroic figure).
Later, under Constantine (early 4th century CE), portraits become more abstracted and simplified; the gaze toward the heavens signals shifting spiritual or religious associations.
Figures:
Figure 4.16: Acropolis of Athens.
Figure 4.17: Apollo Sauroctonus (Praxiteles).
Figure 4.18: Hercules Farnese (Glycon of Athens).
Figure 4.19: Togatus Barberini (veristic Roman portrait).
Figure 4.20: Augustus of Prima Porta.
Figure 4.21: The Tetrarchs (joint rule; uniformity over individual likeness).
Figure 4.22: Marble portrait head of Emperor Constantine I.
4.5.1.3 Indian Subcontinent
Greek and Roman influence reached parts of India through trade and contact, affecting drapery and form. Indian naturalism was less restrained than the classical ideal.
Ashoka (r. ) oversaw large-scale Buddhist architecture (84,000 stupas) to house relics; Yakshi (female nature figure) at the Great Stupa at Sanchi indicates an emphasis on earthly blessing and physique.
Gandhara sculpture (3rd–4th century CE) reflects a synthesis between Indian iconography and Hellenistic drapery and form in Buddhist art; Maitreya, a bodhisattva awaiting future enlightenment, is a notable example in Gandhara (modern-day Pakistan).
The Gandhara works show a fleshier Indian figure but with drapery and pose influenced by Greek/Roman aesthetics.
Figure 4.23: Yakshi, Sanchi (Great Stupa).
Figure 4.24: Maitreya, Gandhara.
4.5.1.4 Romanesque and Gothic Eras in Europe
Romanesque art (eleventh and twelfth centuries) emphasizes abstraction and distortion in service of spiritual messaging; figures are elongated or twisted in space, with linear drapery details that do not necessarily align with the body’s geometry.
The tympanum (above the portal) at Autun Cathedral (1120–1132) by Gislebertus depicts Last Judgment with a flattened Christ, conveying spiritual messages over naturalistic depiction.
Gothic art (twelfth–fourteenth centuries; lasting into the sixteenth in northern Europe) returns to greater naturalism; figural forms begin to reflect observation of physical fact while still serving spiritual narratives.
Court Style (late 14th–16th centuries, especially in France) highlights aristocratic tastes and the exaltation of earthly rulers; in Notre-Dame, the Virgin Mary and saints appear within a heavenly court context.
While Romanesque figures are not fully naturalistic, Gothic figures show more naturalistic qualities, with drapery and proportion becoming more discernible.
Key figures:
Figure 4.25: Last Judgment, Gislebertus.
Figure 4.26: Saints Martin, Jerome, and Gregory.
4.5.2 Stylistic Periods or Movements
4.5.2.1 Italian Renaissance
The Renaissance begins in Italy in the 14th century as a conscious revival of classical ideas, fueled by humanism (the belief in the value of human potential and achievement).
Renaissance artists sought to express individuality while adhering to shared stylistic standards; naturalism reaches new heights, and linear perspective is invented to create a convincing illusion of depth.
Masaccio’s The Holy Trinity (early 15th century) is the canonical example of linear perspective, with orthogonal lines converging at a vanishing point on the floor where the kneeling patrons sit, symbolically placing them on the line between life and death.
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints by Raphael (c. 1498–1520) illustrates a hierarchy of sacred figures (Mary as Queen of Heaven) with open steps for the viewer’s ascent; the landscape behind is earthly and not a celestial vision.
Titian’s Madonna (c. 1488–1576) differs from Raphael’s in more individualized facial features, more naturalistic drapery folds, and a landscape brought closer to the picture plane.
The Renaissance marks a shift away from the broad cultural style towards individual experimentation within the same foundational ideals, with a renewed emphasis on human empathy, agency, and the relationship between sacred figures and the everyday world.
Figures:
Figure 4.27: The Holy Trinity, Masaccio.
Figure 4.28: Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints, Raphael.
Figure 4.29: Madonna and Child, Titian.
4.5.2.2 Realism
Distinction between naturalistic appearance and realism as a social or political statement: naturalism describes how things look in nature, while realism communicates underlying social or philosophical truths.
Realism emerged in the 19th century in response to academic conventions and sought to present ordinary life un idealized or unembellished.
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) is a central figure: Burial at Ornans (1850s) presents a rural funeral in a large canvas with ordinary people, challenging the Academy’s elevated subjects and formal treatment; The Stone Breakers (1851) depicts rural laborers with unglamorous realism.
Courbet’s Realism faced institutional criticism and contributed to an anti-Academic movement seeking artistic independence from the École des Beaux-Arts.
Other national expressions of Realism include Ilya Repin (Russia) in Barge Haulers on the Volga, which emphasizes individual dignity and cross-sectional representation of the Russian peasantry; Wilhelm Leibl (Germany) in Three Women in the Church, noted for its detailed portrayal of rustic life and personality.
In the United States, the Ashcan School (e.g., George Bellows’ Cliff D dwellers) captured urban working-class life and social issues.
A note on photography: Photographic realism is not inherently more truthful than painting; photographers can manipulate subject matter, lighting, composition, and development to alter appearance; some photographs use color processes like gum bichromate to create mood (Edward Steichen); Lucas Samaras’ Photo-Transformation experiments further manipulate prints after development.
Figures:
Figure 4.30: Burial at Ornans, Gustave Courbet.
Figure 4.31: The Stone Breakers, Gustave Courbet.
Figure 4.32: Barge Haulers on the Volga, Ilya Repin.
Figure 4.33: Three Women in Church, Wilhelm Leibl.
Figure 4.34: Cliff Dwellers, George Bellows.
Figure 4.35: Moonlight: The Pond, Edward Steichen.
4.5.2.3 Expression(ism)
Expressionism emphasizes emotional content and the artist’s subjective response over strict naturalism; origins include devotional and mythological imagery in diverse cultures.
Andachtsbilder (devotional images used for prayer) illustrate devotional themes (e.g., suffering of the Virgin and Christ) that can be interpreted with strong emotional impact.
In Germany, Expressionism coalesced into movements such as Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) after World War I, focusing on social critique and the harsh realities of modern life in the 1920s and 1930s.
Max Beckmann and George Grosz produced works that critiqued society and politics, often with stark, sometimes abstracted forms to emphasize the malaise of the era.
Examples:
The Great Goddess Durga Slaying the Buffalo Demon (Durga as a dynamic, expressive subject) – Figure 4.36.
Paris Society by Max Beckmann – a critical, diffuse, albeit social scene – Figure 4.37.
The Hero by George Grosz – a graphic realism addressing anti-heroic treatment of veterans, etc.
4.5.2.4 Abstract Expressionism
Emerged in mid-20th century New York; focus shifts to the physical properties and processes of painting rather than linear pictorial storytelling.
Not all Abstract Expressionists forego representation entirely; Still, Pollock, Rothko, and others foreground artistic process and materiality.
Examples: Clyfford Still’s Untitled (1957) with jagged, mountain-like forms; Jackson Pollock’s The Deep; Mark Rothko’s No. 61 (Rust and Blue).
The movement is characterized by freedom from strict stylistic rules and by emphasis on the act of painting and the material quality of paint.
4.5.3 Individual Style
Johannes Vermeer (Dutch Golden Age) showed a distinctive, intimate domestic realism characterized by luminous interiors and careful handling of light.
The Geographer (late 17th century) presents a scene inside a private room with a globe, charts, and a compass; Vermeer’s use of multiple glazing layers produces a rich luminosity and a serene, precise atmosphere.
Figure 4.38: The Geographer.
Vincent van Gogh (Post-Impressionism) offers a case study in personal style shaped by life events and letters to his brother Theo; vibrant color, expressive brushwork, and symbolic use of motifs (e.g., cypress trees) reveal his inner life and artistic intent.
His life included relationships with art dealers, moves across Europe, and a late period in Arles where his work became notably distinctive.
Figure 4.39: Wheat Field with Cypresses.