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I. DEPICTING THE BODY

1. Beyond the likeness of an individual, some portraits represent:
a. inner mental states social preferences
b. political issues
A. Portraits
1. A successful portrait goes beyond simply creating a likeness.
2. The bust of Queen Nefertiti has an individualized, idealized, perfectly symmetrical
face.
3. Nefertiti displays the new aesthetic canon:
a. eased flowing naturalistic elegant
4. Nefertiti embodies the ancient Egyptian concept of female beauty.
B. “The Beautiful One has come.”
1. The Study for the Portrait of Okakura Tenshin,
2. Records a face that emphasizes inner character.
3. The portrait also mirrors the social, political, and aesthetic controversies in Japan
during his time.
4. Japanese-style contour lines and flat shapes in Okakura’s left hand and sleeve,
5. the face and hat are rendered with Western chiaroscuro (dark and light shading).
6. Okakura believed that only the combination of modernism and tradition meant
progress in art.
7. This drawing combines Japanese and Western art styles
C. The Portrait of Dr. Gachet
1. Focuses on a person’s inner mental and emotional state.
2. The artist revealed as much about himself as he did about his subject.
3. Portraits can be visual records of inner emotional states.
4. Van Gogh was less than two months away from his suicide.
a. thick paint animates the surface
b. emphatic dashes and tight swirls model form
c. color saturation
5. All indicate van Gogh’s own agitation and intensity.
6. The painting is an image of Gachet and a reflection of van Gogh’s inner state.
D. In Fanny (Fingerpainting),
1. Chuck Close used the portrait to create a detailed record of the structure, ridges,
pores, and wrinkles of an elderly woman.
a. Enormous scale-more than 9 ft. high.
b. lizard-like eyelids watery eyes cracked lips sagging neck skin
2. We can stare at a person’s face, an action considered impolite in U.S. culture.
E. Faces,
1. By Nancy Burson, gives us the opportunity to indulge our curiosity about other
people’s faces.
2. These are photographs of children with unusual faces due to genetic conditions,
accident, or disease.
3. Burson’s photographs reveal aspects of personality:
a. friendliness
b. dreaminess
c. caution
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d. concern
e. curiosity
f. boldness
4. Burson’s photographs act as a mirror to the viewers, who reveal themselves in their
reactions to the images.
F. Leigh under the Skylight
1. Full-body portraits often reveal more about the sitter’s personality than just a face
rendering.
2. Sitting for long periods of time, subjects unintentionally reveal clues about their most
intimate selves, primarily through their poses and facial expressions.
3. This full-size nude is definitely a portrait of a particular, individual man.
4. Freud’s portraits are known for their amazing range of paint applications and for
revealing the inner being of his sitters.
G. Doryphoros
1. Video allows artists to make moving portraits. Bill Viola’s
2. Dolorosa shows a weeping man and woman.
3. Dolorosa is part of the series The Passions, based on
4. Renaissance and Baroque paintings of figures in sorrow, ecstasy, or astonishment.
5. Viola sought to expand their emotional and spiritual
6. Self-Portraits are representations of the artists created by the artists themselves.
7. Rembrandt’s self-portraits, painted over many decades of his life, are a record of his
pleasures and sorrows.
8. He recorded his face as strong, vulnerable, cloddish, or sophisticated from youth
through old age.
9. Rembrandt van Rijn recorded his face as:
a. strong vulnerable cloddish sophisticated happy worried sorrowful humorous
resigned
10. Kahlo painted her face many times, almost always with the same impassive
expression.
11. She surrounded her image with symbols of her personal history and Mexican history.
12. Through her self-portraits,
a. Frida Kahlo expressed her inner and outer being, as well as social and political
forces.
H. Self-Portrait with Monkey:
a. Kahlo’s face is central
b. braided hair shows identification with peasant culture
c. lush Mexican foliage appears around her head
d. the monkey was her animal alter ego
1. Cindy Sherman photographed herself 100s of times, the effect being fragmentation,
not a unique individual.
2. Each image reflects a socially prescribed or media-disseminated role.
3. Sherman suggests that we have no built-in sense of identity, but rather
4. She reenacts roles for women given by the media:
a. sweetheart next door
b. housewife
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5. Mariko Mori creates photographs and performances starring herself in various roles---
geisha or cyber- chick, total fabrications.
I. Birth of a Star,
1. She photographed herself as a teen rock star in a shiny, plastic, plaid skirt and spiked
purple hair, surrounded by computer-manipulated floating bubbles.
2. She translated that image into Star Doll, limited edition doll.
3. Her Star Doll identity is a fabricated hybrid, her work raises the question, “What is
‘self’?”
J. The Physical Body
1. Artists use the body to address ideas about the essence of humanity as well as cultural
ideals.
K. The Ideal Body
1. Protagoras said, “Of all things, the measure is man,” ancient Greeks had a great
respect for the human mind and body.
2. The Greeks believed humans were capable of perfection, defined as a fit body guided
by a keen mind.
3. Emotions were less important than the intellect.
4. Nudity was common in art and athletic events, glorified, the idealized human form.
L. Doryphoros,
1. Or “Spear- bearer,” slightly larger-than-life- size nude that reflects the Greeks’ deep
appreciation of the human body.
2. The figure is idealized:
a. in the balanced pose
b. in the internal proportions
c. n the restrained emotions
d. in the roles depicted— youth, athlete, and warrior
3. This work was executed in the Greek Classical art style.
M. Polykleitos
4. Developed a canon of proportions, in which each part of the ideal body was in
carefully controlled proportion to all other parts.
N. Contrapposto
1. (counterbalanced) This stance is the way many people stand, the sculpture re-creates
an image of a living, flexing body.
2. In some African traditions, the head and neck were considered the most important
body parts.
3. The patterns represent scarification and carefully combed, braided, twisted, or beaded
hair.
4. The Male Torso combines naturalistic and abstracted features.
5. In African art, ideal proportions for the human body were usually divided vertically,
with one-third for the head, one-third for the torso, and one-third for the legs.
a. internal proportions idealized character harmony of parts restraint
O. Male Torso
1. All are important elements in the (Ancestor figure).
2. The frontal pose contributes to the dignified, almost solemn aspect of the sculpture.
3. In ancient India, the ideal body had a soft, supple, fluid quality.
4. The stone has been so sensitively shaped that it gives the impression of living
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P. Torso,
1. From the ancient Harappan civilization centered on the Indus River in what is now
Pakistan.
2. The sculpture is an idealized version of the human body, possibly a youthful deity.
3. The distended stomach suggests a yogic breathing.
4. The stone has been shaped to give the impression of living flesh, smooth muscle, and
a pad of fat.
5. Contrast Torso to the \forms in Doryphorus and in the Male Torso from Baule,
6. The ideal female body in ancient India was very well rounded and remarkably limber.
7. Sensuality is an important and central characteristic of human nature.
Q. Yakshi
1. A nature spirit who represents fertility:
a. breasts are exaggerated emphasize her powers
b. her touch caused trees to flower
c. her body is curving and rounded seen through her transparent skirt
d. twists with incredible flexibility
e. belt emphasizes her broad hips in contrast to her small waist
R. Nobles at the Court of Shah Abbas.
1. Many cultures do not have a tradition of depicting nudes in art, yet even these
cultures have representations of ideal human forms
2. This beautiful couple represents ideal qualities of youth in early 17th century Persia.
S. Flawed Humanity
1. The dramatic display of emotion in this sculpture represents a theatrical struggle.
2. Laocoön and His Sons,was created when Greek art turned to depicting humans:
3. engaged in violent action vulnerable to:
a. age injured,
b. diseased
c. subject to feelings of pain,
d. terror,
e. despair
T. Hellenistic era
1. Stoicism - individuals were urged to nobly endure their fateand stateinlife.
2. Epicureanism - advocated intelligent pleasure seeking in life because death was the
end of existence.
3. Both imply a resigned acceptance of fate and a withdrawal from the Classic Greek
ideal.
4. In medieval Europe, human nature was held in very low esteem. Medieval Christians
saw a great split between God’s divine realm and the natural world, a place of sin and
corruption.
U. The Last Judgment
1. (early Gothic style), from the main entrance of the Church of St. Lazare, is another
example of art depicting flawed humanity.
2. Humans are depicted as miserable, frail, pitifully unattractive.
3. The scene illustrates the end of time, when every person rises from the ground to be
judged forever as worthy of heaven or condemned to hell.
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4. Because human nature was considered so base, the idealized Greek nude was
inconceivable, and the idea of the body as beautiful and good disappeared.
V. “There is nothing to be seen more wonderful than man...”
1. Attitudes about human nature shifted again.
2. Humanistic philosophy celebrated the glory of humanity.
3. Michelangelo believed the human form was the most perfect and important subject to
depict.
4. The nude as an ideal form became popular again.
5. The body was seen now as a work of God.
6. Michelangelo sculpts David as he first faces Goliath.
7. Tension is apparent in his
a. frown,
b. muscles,
c. protruding veins
d. head and hands are oversized,
e. indicating youthful potential inner tension speaks of the core of being,
f. the soul body is ennobled and emphasized, but only as a vehicle for the soul
W. Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?
1. In an era of consumerism, people often gauge their worth by the purchases they can
make, not by character, deeds, fate, or karma.
2. Body shape becomes something that can be bought, too.
3. In this Pop Art collage, we see the aestheticized body ideals of the late twentieth
century:
a. buff,
b. muscular man
c. amazing sexual prowess
d. thin,
e. sexy woman

f. a fashion-model pout
4. The faces and bodies have been molded through implants, plastic surgery, and the
latest ab machine.
5. This work mocks the notion that status can be acquired by purchasing consumer
products, or by manufacturing an ideal body type for oneself.
X. The Body as the Subject of Scientific Study
1. Starting with the Renaissance, religious models for human nature held less sway in
Europe.
2. They were challenged and displaced by concepts based on scientific inquiry.
3. This shift was also apparent in artwork.
4. A famous anatomical study is Andreas Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica. His
Fourth Plate of Muscles is an example of European Renaissance scientific studies of
anatomy.
5. Growing interest in anatomy resulted in different depictions of the body then those
used to reveal religious truths, philosophical positions, or inner emotions.
Y. The Persian Anatomical Illustration shows a pregnant female.
1. She draws back the skin of her chest and abdomen to reveal inner organs.
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2. She holds a plant in her hand, which may have been symbolic of her fruitfulness.
3. The invention of photography meant that human movement could be stopped and
examined.
Z. Handspring, a flying pigeon interfering, June 26,
1. 1885 is a study of the human body in action made by Eadweard Muybridge.
2. The photograph allows artists and scientists to study the mechanics of human
movement.
3. Muybridge altered the concept of the human body.
AA. The Limits of the Self
1. Is the individual person a discrete entity?
2. What are the boundaries between the self and the environment, between the self and
the spiritual realm, or between the self and technology?
3. Many cultures of the South Pacific see the person as an amalgam of:
a. life forces
b. physical substances r
c. itual knowledge
4. This amalgam is always changing, transforming and also in danger of coming apart.
5. Ritual tattooing was one way of strengthening the individual.
6. Extra eyes gave the tattooed person more power, decreased vulnerability.
7. Tattooing is often part of initiation rites.
8. Tomika Te Mutu of Coromandel, a Maori chief, his tattoos were seen as an extra skin.
BB. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
1. By Boccioni presents the human figure distorted by external forces, and thus
continuous with all other forms and energy in space.
a. ritual beliefs
b. scientific discoveries t
c. echnological advances
2. All of the above can shape the concept of the human being.
3. The human being is now seen as permeable and an integrated part of the total world.
4. If ritual beliefs can shape the concept of the human being, then scientific discoveries
and technological advances can do so as well.
5. The body is:
a. considered less human considered more a form
b. continuous in space
c. muscle and bulk implied
d. resembles a map of aerodynamic turbulence
6. Boccioni was part of Futurism, which celebrated violence, speed, energy, motion,
force, and change.
CC. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space,
1. dissolves the conventional belief that the skin defines the body’s outer edge.
2. In this sculpture, the body is depicted as a mass of wave energy defined by its
movement through a fluid atmospheric medium.
DD. Sickness and Death
1. Humans become ill and die, topics which are also addressed in art.
2. Intra-Venus, is a series of large-scale photographs that the artist, Hannah Wilke, as
she struggled with and eventually succumbed to cancer.
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3. In the 3 panels from Intra-Venus, Wilke assumes poses derived from images of
sexually attractive nudes taken from fine art and from popular magazines.
a. her glance implies the presence of a sexual partner she is the object of voyeurism
b. her posture depicts narcissistic pleasure
c. she is Venus, goddess of love and beauty
4. Wilke reclaims sexuality for herself in sickness and challenges conventional ideas of
attractiveness.
EE.Striking Worker, Assassinated
1. A close-up view of death by Manual Alvarez Bravo.
2. In painting, death can be glorified or idealized. In this photograph, formal qualities
are evident...esthetic fine points coexist with details of appalling gore.
3. Striking Worker, Assassinated is a disturbing image, not only for its content but also
because this death is close up and immediate.
II. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSION IN ART
1. Much art is related to the mental or emotional state of humans. Work that functions
psychologically:
a. art in which the body is affected by emotional and mental forces
b. art that is psychologically potent and affects the mental state of those who view or
use the art
c. art that acts as a record of a mental or emotional state
A. The Scream
1. The distorted body is the vehicle for expressing inner terror, anxieties, and pressures.
2. Realism has been abandoned to give form to these internal emotions.
3. Inner emotional forces have distorted and deformed the head into almost a skull-like
form.
4. The figure stands in physical and emotional isolation, screaming at a pitch that
reverberates in the landscape and in the sky.
B. Double Mask
1. From the Ejagham people of the Cross River area of Cameroon, is psychologically
active when used, worn or displayed.
2. The mask is meant to be psychologically potent by:
a. giving the wearer extra power
b. intimidating the audience watching a performance
3. The Inuit people of Alaska are known for their inventive masks that are intended to
increase the power of those who wear them in rituals.
4. In Inuit beliefs, the swan leads the white whale to the hunter.
5. During rituals the wearer of this mask would receive added powers in whale hunting.
6. Giovanni Battista, Piranesi’s Prison, focuses on the complicated, dreary spaces of the
dungeon which act as a metaphor for the darker, twisted side of the human mind.
7. These complex, dark chambers are the exact opposite of sunny landscapes, but each
can be seen as a metaphor for a human state of mind.
8. Listen to Living, is an example of Surrealism, a movement that emphasized absurd or
dream states.
9. Matta-Echaurren’s paintings are called “inscapes,”he sought to create an image of the
workings of the human mind.
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10. Surrealist paintings like this one are often intended to be reflections of the
unconscious mind and to allude to cosmic forces in life, such as creation and
destruction.
11. Matta-Echaurren’s work is marked by:
a. vivid colors
b. luminous patterns
c. bold lines
d. a vague, unspecific background
C. Artwork meant to record a mental state
1. Green, Red, Blue,
a. By Mark Rothko, hints at a sublime moment or transcendent state of being.
b. He created a series of paintings that contained large rectangles, sometimes only
vaguely defined, against a field of other colors.
c. Rothko used abstraction to address broad and fundamental feelings/ideas, because
figurative or narrative imagery was too specific/limiting.
d. Rothko’s abstractions were meant to provide a kind of direct physical experience.
e. By painting glowing colors and hovering shapes, the artist hoped to allude to a
sublime, transcendent state of being.
III. THE BODY IN ART AND AS ART
1. The body is not only depicted in art; it is used in making art, or it is transformed to
become artwork.
A. The Body as Art Material
1. The human body is material for art making. It can be painted or sculpted, or it can be
part of a performance or spectacle.
2. The living body energizes, personalizes, or adds emotional content to the artwork.
3. In many cultures, body painting is the same as wearing masks or costumes.
4. Body painting is an important art form among some African people.
B. Ngere Girl Prepared for a Festival.
1. Among the Ngere people, girls paint their torsos white and their faces in brilliant
colors after initiation,
2. The patterns of color are similar to the way the face can be abstracted and broken
down into parts in sculpture.
3. The human body is malleable and can be changed for aesthetic purposes.
4. Mayan rulers often flattened the foreheads of their offspring, and hair was cut and
sculpted in a dramatic way.
5. Ana Mendieta created several outdoor performances that dealt with her body directly
or the trace of her body on the earth.
6. She made herself into a body sculpture covered with mud and straw. She posed
against a tree in a manner reminiscent of ancient fertility goddesses.
C. Silueta (Silhouette)
1. Mendieta covered her body in mud and assumed distinct poses to represent primal
feminine forces with her own body.
2. The energy of her living being was joined with the earth, which she believed was a
force that was omnipresent and female.
3. Marina Abramovic’s work involves pushing the mental and physical limits of her
being. Time, actual lived experience, and her own body are her materials.
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D. The Artist Is Present

1. A 736-hour-long piece involved Abramovic sitting immobile in the atrium of the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, while museum guests were invited to sit
opposite of her for a span of time.
2. The performance created a space of stillness in the crowded, noisy museum and a
sense of slowed-down time that was discontinuous with the surroundings.
E. The Body as an Art Tool
1. The most important tools of artists are their bodies: fingers, hands, and arms, guided
by their minds.
2. In making works of art, artists continually touch the entire surface of their works.
3. Jackson Pollock painted Lucifer with the motion of his entire body.
4. This style of painting is called “gestural abstraction” or “action painting.”
5. His body movements were fixed and recorded in the paint surface, a rhythmic mesh
of drips, congealed blobs, and looping swirls.
6. The action painter was seen as an isolated genius, almost always male.
7. The work had no moral message and no narrative, just pure paint and pure body
action.