Author: Miles Vasquez (Page 1 of 2)

Frida Kahlo was an artist consciously creating her own image, along with the paintings she considered her unseen reality. Although her paintings are influenced by a surrealist iconography, Frida did not consider herself a surrealist by any means. Her paintings depict extremely personal realities, and the technique she uses comes from preexisting Mexican traditions. She experienced an accident that left her painting from bed, and vulnerable to miscarriages throughout her life. In constructing herself and coping with her past, she makes something more personal than Surrealist art.

De Stijl, was about reduction and geometric abstraction. These artists hoped to reach visual and spiritual perfection through geometric abstraction and harmonious composition. Mondrian is an active artist for this movement, and his paintings are shadeless, flat, and aim to eliminate the distinction between foreground and background. These ideals contributed to the Bauhaus school and Walter Gropius’ architecture. The glass curtain on buildings is only possible due to metal structures and thus the increasing power of mass production.

Post war art took the form of Abstract Expressionism in America. The Liver is the Cooks Comb is a vivid, biomorphic painting, it is made from the artists’ large gestures. These gestures are part of the technique of automatic painting, or painting without an end goal–just movement. Mark Rothko brought a different aspect of Abstract Expressionism in to view. Reminiscent of Matisse, Rothko’s paintings are huge blocks of color best viewed in low light–the grandness and quality of the colors makes the paintings feel like looking into the sky.

Today in class we finished discussing Gauguin and Munch, two post-impressionist painters. Gauguin’s approach to art hinges on the corruptness of society, and the purity of what he considered less civilized or industrialized cultures. To this end, he intentionally abandoned his professional artistic training in favor of circling the globe via French colonies. Color still takes center stage in these paintings, but the subject matter speaks to a very personal expression of Gauguin’s own experiences in the places he visited. The painting, ‘Where do we come from?…’ captures both the realistic figures and environment he would have seen on his travels, but also how he felt about civilization and the burden of knowledge. It’s a painting filled with abstraction and the exotic. Abstraction, reduction, and simplification become key values as art moves into Fauvism and Expressionism in the early 20th Century.

Fauvism is directly influenced by the impressionists due to a retrospective gallery of van Gogh and Gauguin that took place in France. With Impressionism fresh on the minds of French artists, color remained central to the Fauvist style. Andre Derain’s painting of mountains is filled with arbitrary color choices and many patches of blank canvas. Rather than color or art as a personal expression, painting focused on color for the enjoyment of color. Henri Matisse wanted his paintings to feel like a good old armchair, comfortable and pleasant–he accomplished this though color.

In Germany, German Expressionism had two influential movements of painters. The Bridge was intended as an intentional opposition to the existing powers of art, and much like Fauvism, it used arbitrary colors. Kirchner’s painting Street, Dresden, is made to be unnerving, nauseating, and uncomfortable. In both color and form, the painting is a psychological exploration into what bothers us visually. Der Blaue Reiter, the other main movement, was short lived but memorable. Franz Marc shared (and exceeded) Gauguin’s disdain for civilization, and he extended this hatred to humanity in general. In his later works, there are no human figures, only animal, for he believed that the purity of animals contains a life force that corrupted humanity lacks.

Many of the major artists of Post Impressionism were also involved at the end of the Impressionist movement. Cézanne, Seurat, van Gogh, and Gauguin were the four artists we focused on for this lecture. For all post-impressionists, color is the driving force of their painting, but both Cézanne and Seurat were concerned with form within color, while van Gogh and Gauguin made more personally expressive works.

Cézanne’s landscapes tend to depict an area he knew very well, but he moves away from capturing fleeting moments and into creating a sense of permanence. Rather than staying true to life, his paintings set out to be paintings, and the composition and brushwork contribute to this effect. Even vast landscapes appear flat and simplified–this simplification would continue to define post-impressionism.

Seurat painted the famous A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, and did so through painstaking methods. Form in this painting is necessarily precise, as each piece of color is intentionally minuscule–the overall effect is that the colors mix (albeit imperfectly) in the viewer’s eye. Over the course of many preliminary studies and drawings, Seurat composed the scene to convey a sense of timelessness and permanence.

Van Gogh, rather than form, painted scenes of personal expression. Early in his career, he was greatly influenced by impressionism, but over time he developed the post-impressionistic style he is known for today. Warm and cool colors are often juxtaposed in his paintings in order to create a flat sensation, even around other illusions of depth.

On the 8th, we watched a recorded lecture on the beginning of the Romantic period. At this point, the border between styles has blurred, and so paintings may have both Romantic and Neoclassic influences. In Grande Odalisque by Ingres, there are neoclassic values of balance and restraint. This painting deliberately goes against the painterly style of Rubens, and the application of the paint is subtle and smooth. Despite these neoclassical elements, however, the subject of the painting speaks to a fascination with the exotic that dominated the time and defined the Romantic period. Additionally, the composition and anatomy of the sitter call to the Mannerism style. This speaks to the obscuring of boundaries between art styles and intentional innovations from artists.

Depictions of current events begins to take hold of the public at the beginning of the Romantic period. Napoleon at Jaffa by Baron Antoine Jean Gros is a propaganda piece that glorifies the ongoing conquest by Napoleon by staging him as a savior to locals with the plague. This image calls to the mythology of the french king holding the power to heal a specific illness just by touching the sufferer. Compositionally, the painting references David’s Horatii, while framing the scene in death and agony. It is the latter focus on dramatic, gut-wrenching emotion that roots the painting in the Romantic movement.

As the Enlightenment takes hold, movements in art begin to emerge. Rather than eras and centuries defining art periods, intentional collaboration and experimentation from artists start to create ‘-ism’s in art. The first of these is Neoclassicism, which is a rebirth of classical values and figures, not only for their artistic merit but also for their deeper meanings of logic, morality, and politics. Part of what began this movement was The Grand Tour of Europe that wealthy young men embarked upon as part of their education. As they brought copies of ancient art back to their homes, the artists and tastes of the time were affected.

Anton Raphael Mengs was a key artist for the movement, and we discussed his painting Parnassus in class. The composition, colors, and figures all echo Raphael’s painting of the same name–the pieces are both balanced, simple, and noble. Mengs however, maintains the lightheartedness from the Rococo period, and so his scene is much less severe. Architecture too, shifted as Neoclassicism took root. Chiswick House is an English house modeled after Italian villas designed by Andrea Palladio. Palladio, in turn, modeled his Villa Rotonda after the Pantheon in Rome, and so there is a clear influence from antiquity.

Benjamin West is an artist who studied with Mengs, and who painted a contemporary event as a history painting. The death of General Wolfe was a recent event at the time the painting was created, and it was a hugely popular piece. General Wolfe is posed like Christ, indicating and reinforcing his status as a national hero, while the figures surrounding him are stoic and restrained. A common belief among the bourgeoisie at the time was that society corrupts, and that the vices of modern living were more detrimental than a lack of society . Therefore, when West paints an Iroquois man, he is a ‘noble savage,’ an ideal of connection to the real world and stoicism.

This class we learned about the Rococo period, and the ways it defines itself and reflects the circumstances of the time. France in particular felt the Rococo deeply, and in a sense the period began with the death of Louis XIV. Now that nobility no longer was bound to Versailles, noblemen began to live in cities in “Hotel Particulier.” While the palace focuses its expression of power outwardly, new noble residences turn towards fancy decor within the home. Walls begin to be decorated with ornate, organic looking gilded reliefs, and furniture was made to look delicate and airy. Scrolls, shells, and leaves were common shapes to find within a wealthy home.

In painting, technique became very painterly and blended. Colors were less pure, and were more seated within the environment. Flowy, elegant composition was favored over rigidity and calculation. A Pilgrimage to Cythera is an example of these, along with the common theme of escapism that was popular among the nobility and those able to commission paintings. For the bourgeoisie, these paintings reflected the moral depravity of the noble classes, so the painting they consumed was much more moralizing and less ornate. Boy Soap Bubble is a painting that acts as a vanitas as well as a genre scene. The boy blows a shiny, pretty, bubble that will inevitably pop–this is how mid and low social classes saw the overindulgent nobility. Eventually, these feelings would culminate in the French Revolution.

This last class we finished a conversation about landscape, skyscape, and genre art in Holland, and began a discussion about the Baroque period in French art.

Without the influence and patrons of the Catholic Church, artists in Holland began to specialize in scenes, styles, and messages in order to set themselves apart from the rest of the market. There was, however, a hierarchy of art genres, and landscapes were near the bottom. Despite this, many landscapes made at the time are indicative of the Baroque period–they capture a moment between actions, or a moment that will never be the same again. Additionally, the role of religion in art fundamentally changes. Rather than depicting religious figures or scenes, art starts expressing moralizing scenes (whose themes are ultimately based in religion), and praises of “protestant work ethic.”

The ill-named Genre genre of paintings also emerged at this time, and they too were rife with moralizing messages. Vanitas in particular was hugely popular among protestants–who considered the ostentatiousness of the Catholic Church to be sinful and gaudy. Jan Vermeer was a Genre painter, with many of his paintings taking place in the same studio with the same props. They also share a similar structure. In his process, he used a camera obscurer to sketch the images of the figures before painting. This was a new technology at the time, and he was one of the first to utilize it.

As for Baroque art in France, Versailles is an architectural wonder that rings of the period. Calculated and grandiose, the palace was made to reflect Louis XIV’s sun motif, and inspire awe and loyalty in his noblemen. The Hall of Mirrors in particular aims to capture each moment of sunlight and preserve it endlessly in an infinite loop of mirrored light–even when the sun is down, candles are light to emulate the effect. The display of power and wealth that is Versailles speaks to its careful construction and the Baroque emphasis on the audience.

With the expansion of the Protestant Reformation, modern day Holland split into a Protestant north and a Catholic south. With Protestantism taking hold in the north, the south became militantly Catholic, especially in regard to their art and iconography. The Baroque ideals of coextensive space, audience interaction, and the incredible extent of Caravaggio’s influence culminate in painters like Peter Paul Rubens. Rubens, much like Leonardo, embodies the modern painter in the 17th century. His step into dynamic compositions, innovative colors, and commitment to capturing an instant within a larger action goes on to define and influence the rest of the period.

Frans Hals in particular developed a painterly application of paint that was distinguishable as his own. After painting something, Hals would go over it with his ‘handwriting,’ a style of painting that makes the paint application look rapid and fluid. This style is an example of artists making themselves recognizable within a secular, open market. Hals also specialized in group portraits such as the St. George Civic Guard. Paulus Potter almost exclusively painted cows in landscape. Catering to the open market without a nobility to rely on forced artists to separate themselves from other artists.

During this class, we took a close look at woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and discussed the ways they are similar and different. Woodcuts were the first innovation among these, and initially they were often used to mimic illuminated manuscripts. A picture could be cut into the wood–a relief technique–and then colored. During the time of movable type, this wasn’t necessarily cheaper than real illuminated manuscripts, but it was certainly faster. As woodcuts developed into their own style, however, it became apparent that the medium had serious limitations.

Engraving is the next step after woodcuts–rather than putting a relief into a wooden block, the artist uses a burin to cut out lines in the plate. The image that results will be exactly the lines drawn into the copper or linoleum. Using the burin allowed the artist to control the width of a line, even within a single stroke, by means of putting more or less pressure on the tool. More pressure will create a deeper and wider line, while less pressure will make a shallower, more precise line. In order to effectively use the tool, however, one must have been trained to do so–it is an incredibly difficult process. Where the engraver wants to curve a line, they must turn the plate, rather than the tool, all the while maintaining the pressure necessary to make the line. This became the issue for engraving, its inaccessibility.

Etching, then, becomes the new medium of choice to imitate engravings. To etch something, one must coat a surface in a ‘ground’ varnish, scrape off the varnish where one wants a line with a sharp implement, then submerge the surface into acid. In the acid, everything unprotected by the varnish will be ‘eaten’ away by the acid–leaving a channel in which viscous ink can sit. More than engraving, etching can easily come across to the viewer as a hand-sketch with ink. The natural flow of the lines and the organic differences between each line separates etching from the uniformity and rigidity of engraving. Still, there is a limit–although cross hatching is now possible, there is no way to create large swaths of a solid color. The effect can be achieved, but only through many small lines.

Aquatint is the solution to blocks of color. By using sifted powder varnish, the artist can melt the powder onto the plate, submerge the plate into acid, and the powder and acid combination will create a well in which a controlled amount of ink can accumulate–creating an area of solid color or shading.

In class we further discussed the Baroque period in Italy and Spain. Most intriguing to me was the sheer increase in dynamism that the period ushered in. Bernini’s David in particular echoed the Renaissance ideal of antiquity, but it was fundamentally more dynamic and involved than sculptures from that period. With the inclusion of the audience in the work’s scope via coextensive space, the viewer is hit with an immediate sense of action.

After the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church engaged in a counter reformation with art as one of their primary weapons. Where Protestantism shuns images, Catholicism doubles down on including the faithful in religious images. The Ecstasy of St. Teresa uses sculptures on the walls, a hidden window, and a sympathetic center to convince a worshiper that they are witnessing a saint have a vision. Bernini was a devotee to Ignatius of Loyola’s ‘Spiritual Exercises,’ wherein people were encouraged to visualize being involved in biblical stories. More than simply being present, these exercises urged the faithful to imagine interacting with figures and events–imaginings which Bernini throughly encouraged with his immersive works. This deliberate inclusion of the audience in the drama and spirituality of art, along with the emphasis on dynamism define the Baroque period.