Art History

Art History

There is no "class" quiz for this material. However, it WILL be on the Final Exam.
Final Exam will be 200 points! Be prepared!

CLASS LECTURE: (March 23, 2017)

Paleolithic Era 30,000-10,000 BCE

• "Old Stone Age"
• Nomadic hunter-gatherers
• This was perilous.
• Cave Paintings
• It was thought that cave paintings would provide "sympathetic magic" for the hunt.
• Used primitive stone tools
• Spear points and other stone tools were some of the first objects crated with "aesthetic" consciousness. 
• Bison spear thrower was evidence of sophistication early on.
• Fertility figurines
• Have a sophisticated beauty for being that old. Some of the earliest figurines depicting human shape.
• Art is used for spiritual purposes.
• Ancient humans from the Paleolithic Era inhabited cave dwellings.

Neolithic Era 8,000 - 2,000 BCE

• "New Stone Age"
• Established dwellings
• Neolithic people developed permanent dwellings.
• Later lived in communities for convenience and protection.
• Some remote places still use this style.
• Domesticated crops and flocks
• More refined stone tools
• Art was used decoratively 
• Rise of Megalithic architecture
• "Great Stone" architecture
• Ex: Stone henge = thought to be a calendar which helps define significant astronomical events such as the Winter and Summer Solstices and the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes.

Mesopotamian Era 3,500 BCE

• Developed God-Man relationship
• Invented written language
• Cuneiform Writing: The Stele with the Code of Hammurabi 
• Concept of the City-State
• Ziggurat
• Artificial mountain topped with a temple
• Tower of Babel? The Ziggurat at Babylon, God confounds language
• Worship Figures
• Made to depict seeing God. 
• Graven Images?
• Mesopotamian Cylinder Seals
• Assyrian Winged-Bulls, Palace Guardian Figures
• Developed the City State
• Ex: The Ishtar Gate, Babylonian, 575 BCE

Egyptian, 2,500 BCE

• Advanced Civilization
• More life-life figure representation
• Funerary, directed toward the after-life
• Geographically isolated, consistency of style

Greek: 450 BCE

• Man is the measure of all things
• Man was depicted as an idealized hero (physically fit). 
• Law, medicine, government, culture
• Parthenon
• Life-like sculpture, Contrapposto
• Pottery
• Ex: hydra, lekythos, krater, kylix, amphora, oenochoe, etc.

Roman: 300 BCE - 400 AD

• Conquered the known world
• From the near east, northern Africa, Spain, France, Germany, etc. all the way up to England.
• If you conquer all of this land, you would have to administer over all of it.
• Greatest builders of all time
• Colosseum, Pantheon, Pont du Gard
• Interested in exporting their culture

-End of Class Discussion-

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CLASS LECTURE: (March 28, 2017)

Christian/Byzantine: 300-1000 AD

• Mosaics
• KEY to the Byzantine Empire.
• A picture that's made up of a bunch of little pieces of glass, rock, etc.
• Roman era was very literal, step forward to Byzantine Empire where mosaics are abstract.
• Stylized representation
• Hagia Sophia
• The Roman capital once moved to Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey. Byzantine Empire. Christianity was named Rome's official religion by Emperor Byzantine.
• There wasn't a difference between the leader of the church and the leader of the land.

Romanesque Era: 1000-1200 AD

• Church Building
• Round arches, fortress like
• Illuminated Manuscripts
• Thanks to the catholics, they kept learning and education alive, as well as the bible. One of the ways they did it is by copying the bible, and translating the bible.
• Because they were translating the word go God, they made it beautiful, filled with drawings in the margins. 
• Loosing the ability to represent people realistically. 

Gothic Era: 1150-1400 AD

• Barbarian influence on culture
• Pointed arches, stained glass
• Elaborate, soaring architecture
• Salt Lake Temple is an example of Gothic Revival
• Gargoil and Grotesques
• Ex: Notre Dame, used as drains for the rain.

Renaissance: 15th-16th century

• Rise of "Humanism" -- Man is the measure of all things....--
• Reasoning, science
• Study anatomy, nature
• Less about the church. It questioned some of the tenants of the church.
• The "great awakening"
• Birth place was in Florence, Italy
• Leanardo Da Vinci (1452-1519
• Very curious about everything.
• To illustrate his sketchbooks.
• He knew so much stuff, nearly everything, more than any other person.
• Created a bunch of stuff used in war, created musical instruments, etc.
• We classify him as an artist for the purpose of his class.
• Notorious for starting something and not finishing it.
• The "Mona Lisa"
• probably famous because it loos like a real person, unlike other paintings of the Italian Renaissance. Leonardo and Michelangelo were allowed to dissect dead bodies and studied anatomy. Appeals to reason instead of God so intently. 
• Believed in God, but not as much as Michelangelo
• "The Last Supper"
• Michelangelo Bournarroti (1476-1564)
• In order to finish everything he intended, he would have to be 500 years old.
• "The Pieta", "The Moses", "The David"
• Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor of marble.
• Still asked to be a painter, reluctantly painted the Sistine Chapel. 
• The ceiling is a series of storied from the Old Testament. 
• "The Creation of Man"

Baroque: 17th century

• Grand, dramatic, action, theatrical
• Complete understanding of anatomy and perspective
• Rembrant, Reubens, Bernini
• Peter Paul Reubens
• "The Raising of the Cross", "The Tiger Hunt"
• Shows action - something's happening inside the painting.
• Would paint these things in a couple of weeks. 
• Back then, the artist was a prince. Now artists are considered "dead-beats"
• Rembrant van Rijn
• "The Night Watch",
• Made a dent in his career
• Mixed story with drama 
• "Christ Preaching" (Etching).
• John Lorenzo Bernini
• "The David", "Daphne and Apollo", "The Ecstasy of St. Theresa"
• Action in the sculpture

Rococo: 18th century (French)

• Decline of the aristocracy
• Right before the French Revolution
• Pastel, playful, romance themes
• Corny courtship, but symbolic of the time.
• Fragonard, Watteau, Boucher
• Honore Fragonard
• "The Swing"
• Typifies the artwork of that era.
• Almost decor more than anything else.
• Flirtatious woman with a guy checking out her legs (at this time, showing an ankle was considered scandalous). The statue blushes at this indiscretion.
• Watteau
• "The Bathers"
• Pretty much an extension of the Baroque but to know no serious end.
• Architecture
• "Wieskirche", Germany
• Simple on the outside, elaborate on the inside
• Grand elaborateness of the Rococo period.

"A lot of times in art, you react against something that has been there for a long time (like a kid trying to shove mom and dad away when they go to college)

Neoclassicism: 19th century

• Didactic, (moral message)
• Return to classic era
• David, Ingres, Jefferson
• Jaques Louis David
• "The Death of Marat"
• The way that it is rendered is very different than before.
• Marat was sick and sat in a bath writing letters. A girl came in (relative of someone he sent to the guillotine) and plunged a dagger through his heart.
• Marat considered a martyr.
• "The Death of Socrates"
• We want our freedom! We need to prove that we can govern ourselves!
• Thomas Jefferson's home
• "Monticello"
• Looks like a Greek temple and a Roman Pantheon.
• Houdon
• "George Washington"

Romanticism: 19th century

• Passion, Intuition, Talent
• Things that we can't explain. What defies logic. Celebrates that we can't explain everything in the world!
• Nature, Emotion
• Primacy of the Individual
• Delacroix, Gericault
• Gericault
• "The Raft of the Medusa"
• Soldiers wrecked of the coast of North Africa, made a make shift raft, who will survive? Resorts to cannibalism. Some have hope, others given up hope, and others are dead.
• Delacriox
• "The Death of Sardanapalus"
• Exotic, interesting.
• Bonheur
• "The Horse Fair"
• Argued by Bro. Griffin that it is Romanticism.
• Dealt with things people don't understand. You don't know what's going to happen when you get on that horse. Nature is "untamable".

-End of Class Discussion-

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CLASS LECTURE: (March 30, 2017)

Realism: 19th century

• Represented subject truthfully
• "Show me an angel and I'll paint you one"
• Realism is wheat's REAL
• Show people as they really were
• Rejected emotionalism and exaggeration
• Rousseau, Corbet, Homer
• Social Realism
• What they were doing
• Optical Realism
• What it looked like
• Courbet
• "The Stone Breakers"
• Homer
• "Snap the Whip"
• Eakins
• "Champion Single Sculls"

Impressionism: 19th century

• Rapid execution, free brushstrokes
• Bright color
• Painting out-of-doors (plein air)
• Monet, Degas
• Impressionism was a big deal
• They'd paint all day, then get together and talk about painting and get drunk. This repeated over and over. Most (well known) impressionists did this.
• Monet
• "Impression Sunrise"
• "Haystacks"
• Experimented with atmospheric light

Post Impressionism: 19th century

• Individual expression by artists after Impressionism
• Included: Van Gogh, Gauguin, etc.
• Van Gogh
• "Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear"
• Only sold one painting in his entire life, even though all of the men in his family were art dealers.
• "The Starry Night"
• Thick, intense color.
• Gauguin
• "Self Portrait"
• "Day of the God" 
• "The Painter of Sunflowers"
• Painted Van Gogh painting sunflowers.
• Seurat
• "Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte"
• Cezanne
• Father of modern art
• "Monte St. Victoire"

Abstraction/Cubism: 20th century

• A departure from reality
• Independence from Renaissance ideals
• Reflection of modern world, technology, etc.
• Picasso, Kandinsky, Klee
• Picasso
• "The Old Guitarist"
• What would have been really intolerable 50 years prior
• Although done 100 years ago, still looks like modern art.
• "The Three Musicians"
• Kandinsky
• Very interested in color.
• Klee

Dadaism: 20th century

• Nihilistic, non-sensical, iconoclastic
• Against main stream culture
• Wanted to create an alternative culture
• Rejected nationalism, war, rationality
• DuChamp
• Oppenheim
• "The Fur-Lined Teacup"
• Duchamp
• "Ready Made altered for an auditory pun"
• Directly making fun of Mona Lisa

Surrealism: 20th century

• The use of surprise, unexpected juxtaposition
• Dream-like, allowed the sub-concious to speak
• Non-sequitur
• Salvador Dali
• "The Persistence of Memory"
• "Apparition of a Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach"
• "Sleep"
• Rene Magritte
• "The Son of Man"
• "The Grand Pyrenees"

Abstract Expressionism: 1940's -- present

• Reaction to WWII
• Assertion of the individual
• Free application of paint
• Rebellious, active, spontaneous
• Drip, dribble, splatter, splash
• New York City
• Frankenthaler
• Unfettered expression of human emotion through paint and color.
• The dreaded modern art
• "This style will last for a thousand years"
• Jackson Pollock

Pop Art: 1950's -- present

• Reflection of modern society
• Popular 
• Andy Warhol
• "Marilyn Monroe"
• "Soup Can"

Op Art: 1960's -- present

• Optical illusion as art.
• Victor Vasarely
• Most well known Op Artist in the world.

Photorealism: 1960's to present

• Using the camera image
• Base a painting on a photographic image.
• Church Close

Conceptual Art: 1970's -- present

• The idea takes precedence over the artifact

-End of Class Discussion-

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