Search for classical studies

Neoclassical was derived from the Greek word nèos, which means "new, and Latin word classicus, which means "of highest rank." Neoclassical art is the revival of the classical Greek and Roman antiquity: Neoclassical artists imitated Renaissance artists to improve the kind of arts during the mid-eighteenth century. Its stern and unemotional forms were reactions to Baroque and Rococo styles. It was also characterized by symmetry, simplicity, and clarity of form, sober colors, shallow space, and strong lines. Jacques-Louis David Jacques-Louis David is one of the most influential artists in this era. He was born into a wealthy family in Paris on August 30, 1748. When he was 9 years old, his father was killed and his mother left him with his architect uncles. He was supported by his rich uncles with his education at the College of the Four Nations. At age 18, he studied at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Even though he had a tumor that impeded his speech, nothing stopped him from becoming an artist. He championed a style of rigorous contours, sculpted forms, polished surfaces, and historical paintings. In 1774, his painting of Erasistratus Discovering the Cause of Antiochus' Disease won him the Prix de Rome, a scholarship for arts students that ensured well-paid commissions in France. His scholarship also included a trip to Italy, where he studied Italian masterpieces and ancient ruins. David became an active supporter and one of the leading artists of the French Revolution. He was appointed as the "First Painter to the Emperor" by Napoleon Bonaparte. His propaganda art served a critical role in French Revolution to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic. One of David's notable paintings from the French Revolutionary period was the Death of Marat. David's last work was the Mars Disarmed by Venus. This was the last picture he wanted to paint but desired to surpass himself in it. Propaganda art is used to encourage or influence an emotional rather than a rational response from the people to support a cause or movement. He remained faithful to the tenets of Neoclassicism, which he transmitted to his students, one of which was Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. He died on December 29, 1825 and was buried in Belgium, not in France, due to his connection to the killing of King Louis XVI. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was one of the most revered French painters and was noted for his Neoclassical, historical, mythical, and nude paintings and portraitures. Ingres was known to follow his own instincts. He experimented on human form, causing his highly controversial anatomical distortions. Critics described his art as "creatures not found in nature." His quest for idealization was endless. Though Ingres preferred painting with historical theme, he also enjoyed doing portraits. He captured his figures with an impressive and realistic ingenuity to reveal their personalities. Ingres paid more attention to lines over colors. However, he was criticized for flatness due to lack of colors and conventional modeling. Despite this, he was still the most sought-after portraitist in France. He was a tenured director of the French Academy. During that time, he was able to complete three major canvases. He left more or less 4,000 artworks, all of which were housed in the Ingres Museum in Montauban, France. He died on January 14, 1867 in Paris. Romantic art was short-lived, yet it reflected philosophical approaches to art. This is the era where art was colorful, emotional, personal, and expressive. Romanticism was characterized by imagination, intuition, idealism, inspiration, and individuality. The Romantic period was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that started in Europe toward the end of the eighteenth century. In some areas, it was at its peak between the periods from 1800 to 1850. It was characterized by its focus on emotion and individualism, and glorification of all the past and nature. It prefers the medieval rather than the classical. The Romantic era is partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the upper-class social and political standards of the Age of Enlightenment. Romanticism was most strongly embodied in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on history, education, and natural sciences. Romantic era is also associated with liberalism, radicalism, and nationalism. Francisco Goya One of the most influential figures in Spanish art was Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes. He was born on March 30, 1746 in Aragon, Spain. He began his art studies when he was a teenager and spent time in Rome to advance his skills. Goya was besieged with orders for portraits, altarpieces, and murals. In 1776, he returned to Spain and became the principal painter to the Spanish Royal Court. Goya described himself as a student of Velásquez and Rembrandt. From Velásquez, he acquired a feeling for soft shaded colors that were applied in layers. From Rembrandt, he learned prediction for dark and mysterious backgrounds. Goya also acknowledged nature as his teacher in art. Goya was trained in the classical tradition of eighteenth century, but he remained an individualist and a realist. Romantic qualities appeared in his paintings, which were not glorified by some art critics. He was a liberal-minded man. He then turned his attention to the world of the dispossessed. He produced Los Caprichos (The Whims), a set of 80 prints in aquatint and etching from 1797 and 1798, and published as an album in 1799. These involved sorcery and witchcraft, injustices, cruelty, and false morality. The Black Paintings (1819+ 1823) were 14 paintings of his darkest and most mysterious creations, disillusionment with society, and insanity. His artworks embodied personal imaginative visions that defied traditional academism and conventional subjects. Romanticism, Impressionism, Expressionism, and Surrealism were the principal movements to be influenced by his work. He died on April 16, 1828 in Bordeaux, France. Eugène Delacroix Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was born on April 26, 1798 in France into an artistic family. He began studying art at the age of 17. He pursued Classical studies and trained under Baron Pierre-Narcisse Guerin, a painter who taught him to paint realistically. At 24, he was already in-charge of architectural decorations. His style was also inspired by the music of his friend Frédéric Chopin, a Romantic composer, He fine-tuned Romanticism by incorporating the art styles of Michelangelo and Rubens. He then developed his own style with affinity of expressing pain and suffering through bright, exploding, and energetic colored canvases. Delacroix became known as the "Master of Color" for his development of unique and memorable approach to color. Though his style had evolved over the years, he stayed true to his displays of emotions and intense colors. He never hid his fascination for destruction and violence to bring out virtuous colors in his paintings. He was admired for his bold and technical innovations. He is remembered as one of the world's most influential French Romantic painters for his ingenuity and expertise. He died in Paris on August 13, 1863 was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Théodore Géricault Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was born on September 26, 1791 in Normandy, France. At a young age, he already displayed artistic inclinations and had fascinations with horses. He became friends with Eugène Delacroix. Together with the other artists, they formed the Romantic movement. In 1819, he ushered the Romantic movement into French painting with his The Raft of the Medusa, which inspired other artists and became the norm for the Romantic painting. It also forged new emphasis on raw emotion and sharply swerving art styles from the refined compositional studies of Neoclassicism. Gericault achieved brilliant visual effects using small, adjacent strokes of contrasting colors. He was the most influential to the Romantic painters that his art styles were adopted and extended by the Impressionists. His art styles in painting were less rigid than the Neoclassical works. In 1822, he produced one of his greatest achievements: his portraits of the mentally disabled or insane people. Originally, there were ten paintings but only five have survived. His untimely death came after months of suffering, following a fall from a horse. He died in Paris on January 26, 1824 at a young age of 32

Updated 126d ago

Classics 102 Lecture 1 What is Greco-Roman Mythology? Intro - Today's lecture is mostly about establishing parameters for the course, explaining what is and is not the object of study - Also want to talk about a few basic cultural-background things Geography and Chronology - We're talking here about how mythology operated during a particular cultural unity that we can call "Greco-Roman antiquity," this periodization used in other fields too: ○ From about 1000 BCE to about 500 CE, although almost everything we'll be looking at comes from about 750 CE (Homer) to 200 CE (Lucian) ○ Geographically we're talking about Greece expanding later in the course into the whole Mediterranean world § Greek mythology started off in Greece. A small world, the base of the Aegean Sea- Athens (archaic world) § Hellenistic world 250 BCE- Greek world and Greek culture expands with more areas. Which then adds and changes cultures and stories § Roman Empire early 2c CE- the use of Greek myths in Roman stories. ○ Dividing line between "Greek" and "Roman" can be fuzzy - Several unifying factors to this period, prevalence of Greek myth is an important one but not only one, also several key points of development: ○ Greek language and religious and cultural institutions, form of Greek civil life. These are things that are mostly the same throughout this entire time period § From localized Greek to Hellenistic to Roman, broadening at every step as aspects of Greek culture are adopted by others § From lesser to greater sophistication, from a subsistence-agricultural society to one with large urban elite (though also lots of subsistence agriculture) □ From everyone helping out and doing their part because to them its still a small world. By the time the Roman Empire comes around, everything changes because the Roman Empire is so sophisticated ® The Roman Empire is the biggest city right now. Class system, trade all over the Mediterranean, the movement and creation of goods and products § From oral poetry to written literature (prose and poetry) that is part of a very self-conscious tradition referring back to the earlier stuff □ He was creating poems as apart of oral traditions □ All the authors from early years have read the old works of the older authors. They build on them and make them their own. New versions What Is Myth in General and What Are Greek Myths? - Myth is explored by many different types of cultures and people - Functional definition of a set of traditional, collectively important stories about the imagined distant past, typically involving gods or exceptional human beings: ○ Traditional means that it's existed in a given culture as long as anyone can remember and isn't attached to any one author (legends, folktales) § Integrated part of their culture § No one made it up. These things happened. Trojan war for example ○ "Stories" is strangely difficult concept, myths are outlines that are turned into real narratives through cultural forms (art, literature, performance) § Complex § The telling of myths does not make the whole story a myth. It’s the underlying myth that is then expanded and added to a real life story. ○ Collective importance means that they are widely known within the culture, and are used to talk about a wide range of topics, explain phenomena § Myths are stories that are about more than their explicit context. Used to create connections between one another. It brought people together. Using the references of mythology to describe someone because everyone knows the stories. § Being called Hercules □ big and strong □ Heavy course load because he had to complete his things before he could become a god - Greco-Roman myth is a set of such stories that were current in the Greek world from before 1000 BCE and in the rest of the Mediterranean world in later periods: ○ Exact origins don't concern us too much here; as in any culture, there are influences from a lot of different places (Indo-European, Near East) § Into-European is like Central Europe and in Asia where stories about myths are similar ○ People often think of myths as possible stories or explanations and can interact with lots of them from different cultures without "believing in" one exclusively § Roman Empire esp. is a multi-cultural, multi-layered environment § There is nothing that prevents someone from believing in other gods, Egyptian gods-Roman gods-Greek gods- Norse- keltic - These myths concern a relatively small set of gods and a very extensive set of human heroic figures ○ Greek had few gods. 12 plus a few extra ○ Greek mythology is more or less human based. Making it less creative and doesn’t have the crazy creativity with rocks speaking or magical things. Not a lot of play with the natural world. The gods go through realistic human issues, making them seem more like them. ○ Greek myth less notable for complexity of divine myth or for variety of wild folktale elements, but heroic myth is uniquely rich and prevalent ○ Aren't nearly as concerned as some myth systems with upholding a given moral code or ideology § This influences who is considered good and who is considered bad. - Greek myth very early on gets adopted and assimilated by cultures all over Italy, serves similar role in Roman art and literature to Greek ○ Continues on into modern culture as part of heritage from GR world Ways of Studying Mythology - Since pretty much all cultures seem to have some set of stories that function in the way I've described, people are anxious to find commonalities across these cultural lines: ○ This is more something anthropologists and psychologists are into than classical-studies types like me ○ Important to realize myth systems are interestingly different as well as interestingly similar, not just variants on same template § Fertility, moon sun gods, etc § Some cultures have extensive myth about certain topics in their cultures - There are lots of different ways that myths can be used to understand the way human cultures work, though none of them really covers all mythology too well (no one "real meaning"): ○ Evidence of worldview, how people explain natural phenomena and so forth ○ How cultures explain their own specific practices and institutions § How do cities get founded ○ Religious dimension, how cultures interact with the divine § Sacrifices, sacred places for the gods ○ Expression of psychological fundamentals (Freud etc.) ○ How cultures negotiate key cultural structures of opposition (Levi-Strauss etc.) § Tend to do it like men and women. Human and non human. Living and death. Creation and ruin and chaos ○ Figurative readings and creative appropriation (often in modern literature) § The same myth can go any direction in how people choose to interpret them Myth of Alcyone and Ceyx as told by Ovid (p. 262-271) is one of my favorites: - Husband Ceyx leaves loving wife to attend to feud business, killed in shipwreck, lots about separation and longing for reunion - Nice detail that she's related to Aeolus, king of the winds, prays to gods uselessly until they finally give in - Lovely final scene with bird metamorphosis - Part of larger saga, characterization of gods, explanation of natural phenomenon just incidentally

Updated 265d ago

Results for "classical studies"

Flashcards