Category: Uncategorized (Page 1 of 48)

On Wednesday, April 17th, we continued our discussion on Realism and began talking about Impressionism. We spoke about the importance of photography (originally known as heliography) at the time. Oftentimes photography took up to 8 hours to process. The photos we looked at included political, controversial photos, for example, death on the battlefield during war and also many still-lifes, displaying shade, sun, and light versus dark portions contrasting one another in a photo. The photo of abolitionist, John Brown, holding the flag and taking a vow while raising his right hand portrays symbolism, as the flag lies as a sign for the Underground Railroad.

This class marks the beginning of impressionism. A continuation of realism, the goals of impressionism consisted of portraying reality, though capturing a brief moment in time. We focused on multiple artists that are some of the most well-known artists in the world. These artists included, Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Edgar Degas. We began studying Monet’s On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt, and his Boulevard des Capucines. These works are typical of Impressionism. Both display visible, light brushstrokes. Monet took over the style of painting “en plain air,” taking great interest in painting city streets and people. Known for the technique of utilizing short, individual brushstrokes, each of a different color. Édouard Manet plays the role of a bridge between Realism and Impressionism. As Charles Baudelaire states, Manet is a “[p]ainter of Modern Life”(Impressionism Powerpoint). Manet served as an artist that studied past works and older artists, especially Spanish painter, Diego Valazquez. Based off of Henri Fantin-Latour’s painting, Edouard Manet, portraying a portrait of the French artist we learn about the artist himself. The painting depicts Manet as a “Flâneur,” meaning a man of great strength, intelligence, education, well-rounded person.

We focused then on Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, also known as Luncheon on the Grass, a painting focused on the foreground and a work which made a statement through the depiction of pale, nude women sitting in from of dark clothed men. The brushwork and lighting of this work is particularly interesting and draws attention and a statement to female bodies, specifically because the background darkly painted. We compared Le déjeuner sur l’herbe to Titian’s, Fête Champêtre, a work depicting more warmer colors than Manet’s and Giorgione’s the Tempest, where the people’s role seem to be ancillary to the rest of the painting. Pierre Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas continued depicting city-life, but focused on people rather than landscapes or buildings. Degas specifically found a fondness for painting the arts, specifically dancers and musicians, which is clearly seen in his The Orchestra of the Paris Opéra. Finally, in the late 1850’s Japanese prints began to hold a heavy influence on Parisian artists during the rush of Japanese works entering Paris markets. Artists began to further modernize their works by undergoing the style of “Japonisme.” The paintings were often flat, with strong outlines of figures and objects. Sharp diagonals occur in these paintings, and oftentimes the viewer looks down on the works. I wonder what the public’s response to “Japonisme” was, and whether there was any controversy over the works and modernizations?

Monday, May 6th, marks our last lecture for the Introduction to Western Art with Professor Plesch! While I am incredibly sad to be finishing this semester and class, I am so grateful for the amount that I learned from Professor Plesch. I really enjoyed this class, and I can’t wait to take more classes with Professor Plesch next year.

Our last class finalizes the semester with Postmodern Art. The focus of this course lies in the idea that modernism is beginning to take over art today. Modernism is thus avant-garde, looking to the future to create progress and new narratives for the public eye. The semester concluded with the study of Postmodernism and Pop-Art, including Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans, bringing an off-beat focus on reality to modern art. Lastly, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum and Michael Graves’ Public Services Building, both present sleek, minimalist architecture for the public eye on the streets of major cities, ultimately in hopes to enlighten viewers with Postmodern themes amidst their busy days. Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing located in the Colby College Museum of Art, allows for modernism and a pop of vibrant, rainbow colors on the campus for all to see when passing by.

We looked at Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, a structure promoting a form of activism toward feminism. Chicago’s work is shaped in a vaginal form, displaying a sense of eroticism and notion of the female body. The Dinner Party remembers and acknowledges women today. 400 women were selected by Chicago to assist her with the commission of The Dinner Party. Each plate is an acknowledgement to a different woman and the floor beneath the structure contains several powerful female figures.

Continuing on, Jean-Michael Basqiat is our first graffiti artist we’ve studied this semester. American artist, Basqiat partnered with Warhol, and ultimately learned from Warhol and took great inspiration from Warhol and his works. Maya Lin’s Viennam Memorial, located in Washington D.C. presented us with a ground-breaking monument, known for its keel and minimal look, yet a structure that provides strong symbolism as it lays beneath the ground like a wound or gash, perhaps nodding to those lost during the war. Finally, El Anatsui’s Dzesi II, composed in 2006, is made up of aluminum liquor bottle caps and copper wire. This material and use of recycling challenges the staid views of early Pre-Modern Western art, and ultimately challenges the trajectory of modern art and the shift in materials to create and present art to the public.

We Continued our last class’s discussion on Postwar Art on Wednesday, May 1st, starting the class by focusing on Frieda Kahlo’s The Two Fridas. The Two Fridas represents a response to the indignities, discrimination, and oppression Kahlo and many others faced as indigenous women. Struggling against the societal limitations on women and people of color, Kahlo exemplifies the personal rebellion of female Surrealists who sought to recapture control over their bodies and assert agency over their lives. 

We continued class, looking at Neo-Plasticism, a technique representing balance of painting, along with the utilization of vertical lines and primary colors. Piet Mondrian presents a unique style to what we have seen before in this class. Mondrian’s abstract works note a modernist style, with clean, black (varying from thick to thin) lines, and geometrical squares and rectangles in his works. Mondrian utilizes primary colors and great amounts of white space, drawing particular attention to the solid colors and sleek, black lines.

We continued class looking at Gerrit Rietvelt’s Schroeder House, a modernist, white building. The Schroeder House is geometrically shaped and displays the common theme at the time of architectural reduction. The building is minimal with majority white, flat walls on the outside, with colored metal rails.

Finally, we finished class by looking at Postwar Art, where the majority of popular art shifts from Paris to states. Arshile Gorky, The Liver is the Cock’s Comb begins our studies of Postwar Art, noting the painting’s biomorphic shapes, abstract expressionism, gestural painting, and action painting. We then looked at Jackson Pollock’s Male and Female. Pollock presents two very basic archetypes: something very clearly that is feminine and masculine. Pollock uses elements like math to stereotypically refer to the masculine mind and long eyelashes and curved lines, representing the female body shape to resemble the female side. These elements ultimately give meaning to the archetypal views.

On Monday, April 29th, we focused on art between the wars. Finishing up our discussion on Expressionism from last class, we talked about analytical cubism, specifically displayed in Pablo Picasso’s Ma Jolie and George Braque’s The Portuguese. Analytical cubism presents duller colors, methodical and simple brushstrokes, and straight lines, diagonal lines, or rounded lines. We discussed philosopher Henri Bergson’s public lectures and his idea that the perceptions are constantly changing for human beings, while the world consistently changes its multiplicity of perceptions.

Picasso’s works encompasses synthetic cubism, as he utilizes the technique of “papier Collé,” also known as just “glued paper.” I particularly like Picasso’s Guitar, as the guitar draws the viewers’ attention to the shape of a guitar, yet the curved wood on the left-hand side shows the obvious shape and form of the guitar. However, the guitar is composed of multiple minimal shapes. Next, we discussed the Milan train station depicted in Umberto Boccioni’s States of Mind I: Farewells, an abstract painting, in which ultimately portrays a black train heading down the center amidst the busy train station of bustling people.

Moving on to the second part of class, we focused on art following World War I. While surrealism arose in the wake of World War I, a unique and iconoclastic challenge to the staid values of a society in the midst of upheaval, post WWI continues the Surrealist and Dadaist movements, ultimately taking them to a greater level. While I have studied many other significant movements, artists, and works, in the interest of time, Dadaism and Surrealism represent changes from previous movements that reflect a rebellion against the strictures of centuries of Western art, as well as the consumerism, capitalism, and social restrictions of fine art and Western society.

We focused on many artists and works during the post war era, specifically the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Some of the works included Jean Arp’s The Entombment of the Birds and Butterflies, Hugo Ball, Hannah Höch and her Cut With the Kitchen Knife Through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, Max Ernst’s 1 Copper Plate 1 Zinc Plate 1 Rubber Cloth 2 Clippers 1 Drainpipe Telescope 1 Piping Man, Man Ray’s The Gift , Meret Oppenheim and her Object (Luncheon in Fur), and René Margritte’s The False Mirror. Two works in particular, though, I believe characterize the Surrealist and Dadaist movements: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain and Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory. Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 Fountain represents a Dadaist poke-in-the-eye to the establishment figures of both the art and commercial worlds. Fountain exemplifies the Dadaist reveling in absurdism, as a direct response to the powers of commercialism and capitalism run amok. Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory. The Persistence of Memory suggests that time is illusory, portraying three warped clocks draped in a natural setting. Dalí brings to light a sort of eroticism, as the clock’s curves and time warping suggest sexual tension and perhaps a body’s objectification. Cartier’s Cartier Crash watch displays just this ethos. Reminiscent of Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory, the Cartier Crash drips down one’s wrist like melting gold.

On Monday, April 24th, we focused on the Modernism movement. We began class focusing on The Manifesto, an organization of a group of artists who published The Manifesto on September 18, 1886 in hopes to promote modernist work and their individual views on it. French poet, Gustave Kahn states, modernism art  “Objectif[ies] the subjective . . . instead of objectifying the objective.”

We continued class depicting Gustave Moreau’s, The Apparition (Dance of Salome). The work, in Albert Aurier’s terms is “ideal, symbolist, synthetist, subjective, and decorative.” The image displays a scene of the head of St. John the Baptist comes to haunt Salome. The painting is rich with lots of details, erotic, and elegant. Salome is represented as beautiful, poised, standing tall, confident, and unafraid, almost inviting the head of St. John to haunt her. We then looked at Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The Scream, a painting known for its’ anxiety-provoking work.

Moving on, we began our studies on Early twentieth-century art, specifically looking at the term “fauvism” and expressionism. Henri Matisse’s Femme au Chapeau is known for encompassing fauvism, a term coming from “fauve,” also known as “wild beast.” Femme au Chapeau displays vibrant, unrealistic colors on the woman’s face, blending her skin into the modern background and rest of the painting, allowing the viewer to undergo visual harmony. Matisse utilizes abstract forms and brushstrokes, but the work is modern and minimalist. I particularly like the intensity of the blues, reds, greens, and oranges of the painting. We also looked at the bright colors and short, intricate lines of André Derain’s, Mountains at Collioure and Matisse’s and the work’s expressive, important balance and placement of the nude women in his Le Bonheur de vivre.

Continuing on, we briefly talked about German Expressionism, studying Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Street, Dresden and Peter Schlemihl: Tribulations of Love, a color woodcut from two blocks of wood on woven paper, along with Franz Marc’s Large Blue Horses. Marc’s Large Blue Horses displays geometrical, abstract forms, vibrant, rich blues, reds, and yellows. Marc’s color choices are purposeful, as he states, “[b]lue is the male principle, stern and spiritual. Yellow the female principle, gentle, cheerful and sensual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the colour which must be fought and vanquished by the other two” (PowerPoint from class). We continued class touching on art abstraction, specifically Wassily Kandinsky’s works typifying pre-World War II Surrealism works through chaos, nuanced focal points, and myriad forms, along with human figures in which demonstrate a spectrum of human experience. To wrap up the class on Monday, we discussed Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, first published in 1900. We also focused on Freud’s theosophy on psychic conflict.

Lastly, we focused on Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Picasso emphasizes escapism, a way of inhabiting a different place perhaps when the current reality is a little difficult. Picasso’s work is abstract, geometrical, yet shows a sense of sensuality and eroticism of the female body. Showing similarities to Paul Cézanne’s works, Picasso’s work is primitive and nonmodern or Western art. I found it particularly interesting to talk about the African masks in comparison to the face shape and body dimension and shapes of the women’s bodies and faces.

On Monday, April 22nd, our class focused on the Post-impressionism Era. We began class, focusing on the form of French painters, Paul Cézanne and Georges Seurat and the personal expression of that of Vincent Van Gogh and French painter and sculptor Paul Gauguin.

The First work we focused on consisted of Cézanne’s Monte Sainte-Victoire; a landscape painting portraying Cézanne’s hometown, a common landscape displayed in many of Cézanne’s works. The painting shows natural greenery and catches the viewers attention right away, however the mountains are a seen to be accentuated to stand as the focal point, as the vantage point and depth of the painting increases the importance of the geometrical shapes and lines in the painting. Monte Sainte-Victoire contain natural green, yellow, brown, and blue tones with swift, varying brushstrokes throughout the work. We compared Monte Sainte-Victoire and Cézanne’s Scene from Bibemus Quarry, both very similar in natural colors and tone. We also focused on the differences of the two paintings, specifically the intense abstraction of Scene from Bibemus Quarry. Cézanne’s two works both encompass his belief to “…treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone…” (Paul Cézanne, class PowerPoint from Post-Impressionism class). We continued class by focusing on the art of the still-life, depicting Cézanne’s Still Life with Peppermint Bottle, Still Life with Apples in a bowl, and Basket of apples.Still Life with Peppermint Bottle stood out to me most by the geometrical details and modernism of the bottle.

Georges-Pierre Seurat, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and Auguste Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party each portray a technique known as “pointillism.” Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, though, by being commissioned with a material known as conté crayon, the work leaves little detail of the people compared to the faces, body language, and rich clothes Renoir depicts in his work.

To wrap up the class period, we focused on Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh. van Gogh’s works consist of a wide range of colors and styles, evoking a variety of different emotions. While we looked at eight different works of van Gogh’s. The last work of Van Gogh’s consists of his Starry Night, encapsulating his intense, swift brushstrokes (just one of the many details and meanings behind this work).

Rubens’s Elevation of the Cross embodies the prime example of Baroque art’s dynamism, passionate energy, and the integration of naturalistic depictions into the expression of grandeur and monumentality. The triptych features dramatic contrasts between highlights and shadows (chiaroscuro)—an visible influence from the Renaissance Italian master Caravaggio—which are most effectively used to illuminate the figure of Christ and to convey the emotive and dramatic moment depicted in the painting. Set against the somber backdrop of dark foliage, Christ’s torso is smooth and radiant as if placed directly under sunlight, subtly separating him from the rest of the figures and suggesting at his divine transformation in martyrdom. A similar kind of overexposure is evident on the faces and skin of the women and children in the left panel, highlighting their awe and horror in reaction to Jesus’ crucifixion. The depiction of human body in interlocked, flowing forms is also highly Baroque in character: Rubens shows influence from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling frescos in his naturalistic portrayal of muscular and robust bodies of the men assisting with the cross’s elevation, suggesting at a meticulous study of human anatomy; furthermore, the bodies’ muscular contortions effectively support the larger pyramidal structure of interlocked human figures in the middle panel, with Christ at the apex. While the pyramidal composition combines freedom and chaos with stability and harmony, the fitting of human forms into a dynamic, voluminous mass captures the instantaneous moment of action and the transcendental, heroic quality it embodies. Last but not least, the color scheme of Ruben’s triptych, consisting primarily of golden flesh tones, rendering the scene with warmth, vitality, and an air of sacredness; while conspicuous blocks of red and blue on garments worn by the figures provide counterpoint and dramatic tension typically seen in Baroque art.

As the Renaissance gradually grows to its height, humanism becomes an ever more significant theme in Quattrocento Italian art. In alignment to the Renaissance educational model of the Studia humanitatis, artists and scholars devoted increased attention to areas of study promoted in classical antiquity, including rhetoric, literature, history, and philosophy. Meanwhile, as independent associations of artisans (guilds) grew in size and started training more learners, artistic activities became more communal; these guilds also developed close ties to commissioners (i.e. aristocrats, government representatives, and religious institutions), who served as artists’ patrons and saw through the establishment of guild artists’ work in city halls and private chapels. Sometimes these commissions take the form of a competition, as is the case of Ghiberti and Brunelleschi’s rivalry in sculpting the biblical scene of Isaac’s sacrifice on a gold relief for the Florence Cathedral. Brunelleschi’s interpretation features a rather organized composition with clear-cut figures and Isaac placed in the central position; the biblical story is depicted in a direct and literal manner, with an angel on the top left restraining Abraham’s arm and preventing his knife from reaching his son’s throat. In contrast, Ghiberti’s composition is more dynamic and florid, achieved through the flowing texture of draperies that both ties the figures together into on unity and also obscures their forms. In addition, the placement of Isaac near the right frame of the relief, combined with the lack of any actual contact between Isaac, Abraham, and the angel, shows an ambiguous interpretation of the original biblical scene and leaves the fate of the main characters still unclear. Ghiberti’s work is highly intense and psychological in that he skillfully crafted opposing forces in his relief and yet left them unresolved, still hanging in the seemingly frozen space and time in between the figures.

For our last class together, we visited the Colby Museum. I really enjoyed this exercise, especially how it served to wrap up our time together and everything we have learned in this course. Each one of my classmates had such insightful comments about a wide variety of works, which showed me just how much we have covered over the course of the semester. I especially enjoyed talking about the works in the contemporary art wing. To me, those works (as mostly non-representational or abstract works) have more space for personal interpretation, so I loved hearing what people had taken away from them! Many thanks to everybody who contributed that day!!

On May 6th, we started class by looking at Pop Art. One common subject in pop art was mass media objects such as advertisements or references to consumption. Take, for example, Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell’s Soup Cans. The variety of soup flavors and the widespread consumption of the food made it a perfect subject to be produced in many variations and tell a story of mass consumption in America. We then moved to minimal art, where the artist’s goal was to make themselves as absent from the work as possible. We discussed Richard Serra’s work outside of the Colby College Museum of Art and how it fit into the values of minimal art. We ended class by considering two other works within the Colby Museum’s collection – both by conceptual artist Sol LeWitt.