Modern Art History

Weekly journal - 1-1.5 pg.

Follow the readings.
Do it out of your own discipline

Sept 12

The Origins of Modern Art

- Gerhard Richter
- Abstract. Would we be able to know the subject without the
title?
- Ruskin --> very biased family. Only child. He was very
sensitive. From Great Britain.
- Whistler took Ruskin to court and sued him.
- Ruskin was a great supporter of Turners work, although he
couldnt abide Whistler.

Jacques-Louis David.
- Oath of the Horatii. 1784
- The space is compressed and reduced. This is an
important factor. It evolves away from the way the
space was used in the Renaissance. Its interesting in
terms of the context of this.
Whistlers Nocturne in Black and Gold
- Commissioned by King of the France, who was the Fallen Rocket
beheaded.
- Death of Marat. 1793
- Portrait of the murdered French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. Marat suffered
from a skin ailment. He was tricked into accepting a woman (Charlotte Corday), who
stabbed him with a kitchen knife.
- Interesting to note that subject matter in art gradually changes from biblical to ______.
This is revolutionary as it takes politics as the subject matter, rather than adoring and
simple, it is a statement.

William Blake
- Nebuchadnezzar. 1795
- Romanticism period.

Francisco Goya
- classless. There is a real dark edge to his works. He sees the brutality in life.
- His series of the disasters of war. He really saw the terrible violence and destructiveness
of human nature. We can see the modern idea of taking a political event and making it the
subject instead of biblical narratives.
- Third of May, 1808. 1814
- Here was see a sacrifice is being made. This is what makes it modern.
- The sleep of reason produces monsters. 1797

Paper - choose a piece of artwork from the text. 20/30s at the very latest

Sept 17

The Search for the Truth: Early Photography, Realism & Impressionism

- the camera and photography has raised its own issues. Can a camera lie? Yes, of course it can.
How valid and accurate is it?

Caspar David Friedrich

- not as well known as the french
- there were only 9 paintings of his in the Mett
- the monk by the sea: its in the 1810. It caused great bewilderment when ppl saw it
- Goethe saw it and understood it.
- This painting is radical because the person in the painting is so small. It really serves to
note how vast the world is and how insignificant ppl are

Sept 19

- looking for a creation that both joined science and art

- Daguerreotype had a lot of flaws, no negatives, only seen through a mirror, couldn't capture
moving images as it took a long time
- Calotype is the forerunner for modern photography

Old Mole

Paper - choose a piece of artwork from the text. 20/30s at the very latest

Research essay topics

Old mole 1985
Martin Puryear
Influenced by Constantin Brancusi

Talk about history of artist

- what inspires him
- who inspires him (what did they do? Share a little about them)
- How qualified he is
- How did his art come to be?
- What do/did critics say?

Formal criticism
- hows it made
- What do I think about it

Come up with questions to stimulate discussion - at least 3

Sept 24

Realism
- In comparison with photography, prints and paintings can still have beauty despite the image
being depraved. Photography on the other hand can be just grotesque (looking at
photograph of dead soldier from the civil war)
- Photography can tell the truth in a way, but it can lie. It is not neutral
- Daumier: Comte de Kraty, The gates of hell
- He was a realist. Most famous painting was called Third Class Carriage.
- Rue Transnonain - expresses Daumiers horror at the injustice of innocent people who
were murdered by the civil guard during the republican revolt of 1834.
- Courbet:
- A Burial at Ornanas. This painting isnt historic, it isnt religious, yet its huge. It is
radical because it is so large, but doesnt have a huge meaning. The burial was simply
a commonplace event in a small provincial town in france.
- Manet:
- Didnt appreciate Napoleon IIIs government
- Djeuner sur lherbe. Caused a major scandal when it was first printed.
- Olympia. Maybe related to the painting by Titian Urbino. (It is not to suggest lust, but
to suggest marriage and love. But eventually these trends change.)

There is a difference between being nude and naked. No one is charming, beautiful or
inspirational when they are naked.

Thomas Eakins The Gross Clinic 1875.

Henry Ossawa Tanner
- student of Thomas Eakins
- African american artist (1859-1937)
- Nicfodeamus coming to Visit Jesus at Night. Jesus is sitting on a rooftop in Palestine. Jesus is
the light of the world. You can see from this painting that the light is emanating from Jesus.

Influence of japanese prints was very big in France.

- Henri Toulouse-Lautrec
- Van Gogh
- Mary Cassatt

Gaugin
- drew inspiration from ancient peruvian art
- Noble savage: greed and poverty in modern society
- He mythologized himself
- He left his wife and family and moved to Brittany. It was cut off from Paris and from modernity.

Oct 1

The Origins of Modern Architecture & Design

The William G. Low House

- Rhode Island
- Shingle home
- Triangular house
- Built 1886-87; demolished 1962

Capitol Building, Rhode Island

- Iron and steel began to be used for infrastructure, allowing for buildings to be built a lot
higher. In this era, a lot of people looked to the past for influence.
- Looks rather to colonial American rather than to neo-classical Roman/Greek

John Wanamaker Department Store

- was a do-gooder; was a patron of the arts
- First department store in philadelphia and one of the first department stores in America

Westminster
- Rebuilt by Charles Barry
- Gothic architecture
- 1834 was ruined by fire. 1840-70 was rebuilt

Paris Opera (Palais Garnier)

- founded in 1669

Bexleyheath - The Red House

- where William Morris lived with his wife
- His passion was politically engaged socialist
- Is like a palace of art
- Stained glass windows which read si je puis.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
- Had influence on european design
- Main representative of Art Nouveau in the UK
- Designed the Willow Tea Room
- The Glasgow School of Art

Gustave Eiffel
- eiffel tower

Oct 3

Aesthetic Movement
- this is more mentioned and prominent more than political themes.
- Falls into the category of decadent.
- Frederick Leighton.

Oct 10

Art Nouveau

Architecture
- feeling of organic and nature
- The casa mila - there are no straight corners in this building
- Interior of the tassel house 1893. Everything is whirled and swirled. The exterior is quite plain.
Belgian designer.
- most interior looks like underwater designs. Look at the place in Barcelona as well as the
underground building in munich.
- Designed by gustave climt - house

Painting
- move towards expressionism
- The scream - does this have any religious influences?
- Any religious ideas are omitted or ignored by art critics.
- The dance of life lacks the joie de vivre of matisse.
- Painting surrounded by masks
- Entry of christ into brussels
- Isle of the dead ominous feeling. Boat is either rowing to or from the isle of the dead.

Fauvism: Form & Colour

- matisse: green line, shocking use of colours.

- Why were they called fauves? French for wild beast. Painted more how they responded to
colours (emotionally), rather than realistic. Critics called them wild beasts because of the
shocking colour.
- It really is the opposite of where art has come from from the renaissance.
- Its important to understanding abstraction
- We note that old renaissance art is flat. You are experiencing something completely different
from you, completely removed. You are looking at something.
- People like picasso start playing around with the window metaphor. The idea of the window
really works with the renaissance.
- Are we looking through windows or are we simply looking at a picture within a picture.
- Ceci nest pas une pipe. Its a picture of a pipe.
- Artists are becoming aware of the limitations of representing what the eye can see. But what
about what the eye doesnt see?

Oct 17

Fauvism contd

Matisse
- The blue reclining nude. Odalisk of reclining nudes in the
- Transformation of this theme into a real woman no longer something that was
beautiful
- harmony I red.
- Obsession with space. Even though they abstract it. They are very involved with spacial issues
- Famous busts of Jeanette. They become more fauvist as the go
 Oct 31

Analytical Cubism

- It can be a challenge to find them recognizable. They grow more spare at the end of the war.
They use a lot of muted non colours.
-

Gustav Klimt
- a lot of paintings were left unfinished.
- Death and life 1911
- Adele Bloch-Bauer I
- 1907
- Jewish sugar industrialist
- Most successfully masterpiece
- WWII: was seized during the war by the Nazis
- Willed (perhaps) her portraits to the Austrian government
- beechwood
- Erotic portrayal of the nude scandalous!
 Nov 21

Dada 1916-1920
art is dead

Dada means hobbyhorse in french. Opened the german french dictionary and put a knife in it.

Marcel Duchamp