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DUTCH PAINTING 17 th c.
Portrait painting was current everywhere in Europe in the 17th century, but it was usually very
aristocratic in conception, as, for instance, in the portraits of Van Dyck. The average person who sat
for his portrait in Holland was interested in a likeness and did not demand that the artist flatter him
or exaggerate his rank. Thus instead of a portraiture of status, pretended or real, Holland gives us
a portraiture in which life and accuracy predominate. Frans Hals held this down-to-earth conception of
portraiture. Rembrandt, on the other hand, was exceptional being primarily interested in character
rather than outward appearances. He penetrates the mind and spirit of his sitters and reveals them to
us, as he does in his "Self-Portrait".
Landscape is probably the most popular of the subjects which the Dutch painted. There had, of course,
been landscape painting before the 17th century. Scenes taking place in the open air had been given
landscape backgrounds, and, in the 16th century in Flanders, the backgrounds sometimes become
more important than the human dramas taking place in them. But earlier landscape was usually a
combination of observed elements and imaginary ones, composed into fantastic mountainous
panoramas, whereas the Dutchman begins and ends with nature and his feeling for it. Dutch
landscape expresses the love of the familiar, love of light and space, love, too, of oil paints and
colour. In the cases of Ruisdael and Rembrandt, powerful emotional content is given a landscape by
use of dramatic lighting and rhythmic organization of space.
Genre painting is the third major category of subject matter in XVI-century Dutch painting,
being probably the most popular with the average Dutchman. Genre pictures are those which deal
with scenes from daily life, in a more or less realistic manner. In the 16th century every conceivable
kind of genre scene was painted, tavern scenes and scenes of low life, of peasants, villages, and of the
pleasant amenities of bourgeois households. At first there is a pronounced taste for crude anecdote-
scenes of drunkenness, gluttony, presented not as immoral but as comical and bawdy. Then, as the
century progresses, genre becomes more elegant. We are taken into finer houses and shown more
patrician activities.
There were many other categories of Dutch painting. Some artists specialized in flower pieces.
Others represented only city scenes. Saenredam painted architectural interiors, and even in so
specialised a field he had competitors. An important category was still life, again an "arrangement", but
of things, usually from the kitchen or the pantry - food, vessels, utensils, glassware - composed at the
will of the artist.
(P. Baird, Dutch Painting in the National Gallery of Art)
Portrait painting – малювання картин
sat for his portrait – сів за його портрет
a portraiture of status- портретний статус
sitters and reveals – натурщиків і розкриває …
Landscape - пейзаж
oil paints – олійні фарби
dramatic lighting and rhythmic organization of space- драматичне освітлення та
ритмічна організація простору
Genre painting – жанровий живопис
subject matter – тема обговорення
realistic manner – реалістична манера
genre scene – жанрова сцена
flower pieces – квіткові частини
аrchitectural interiors – архітектурні інтер’єри
still life – натюрморт
composed - скомпанований
You are offered two views on modern art. Choose the one you support and write a persuasive essay to
defend your position.
MODERN ART
Does art lie entirely in the eye of the beholder, or should it have minimal standards? Who
decides what is art and what is only a visually appealing painting, photograph, or sculpture?
What, makes a sketch end up on a museum wall and another behind a refrigerator magnet?
Many years ago, during a visit to the SF MOMA, it struck me powerfully that the idea of art in
the US had gone seriously amok. — we have become, to quote Milosz, "indifferent to content,
and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself." The world, I felt
sure, will one day wake up and realize that much of abstract modern art — in particular the
abstract expressionism of Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Kandinsky, etc. -- has been the
greatest sham in the history of art. I stand with the British art critic Craig Brown who too is
"astonished that decorative "wallpaper", essentially brainless, could gain such a position in art
history alongside Giotto, Titian, and Velazquez."

This is partly a sign of the times. Like our political leaders, we get the art we deserve. Art got
hitched to the market decades ago. Mass culture, with its fads, trends, and movements,
engages and stupefies ever larger audiences. "New money" consumers seeking the gloss of
sophistication have to be smartened up and guided to the right acquisitions. Staid and serious
practitioners are rarely interesting; tortured, flamboyant, alcoholic artists make better copy,
playing into the stereotype of creativity and genius. Better still if the results do not even
challenge or offend, or do so sensationally—the audience then is the largest, and they don't feel
inferior about their own interpretations, because none is now privileged over any other! With
sage gravity, the works are deemed "abstract", instead of what they at best are — the most
creative decorative smudges in the world.

In the 1950s, artists like de Kooning and Pollock proposed a radically new way of thinking
about painting: as the direct trace of the artist's physical engagement with the materials. ... the
canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act -
rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze, or 'express' an object, actual
or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. The abstract
expressionists were great formal innovators, but even more important than Pollock's drips or de
Kooning's arabesques was their revolutionary insight that a painting can represent nothing
other than the process of its own creation.
It took an artist like Pollock to step back from his own work, which at the time looked unlike
anything that had come before, and say, with bold conviction: "This is it. This is what modern
painting looks like. " In other words, Pollock taught us how to see art in a new way.
ART. Choose the right answer.

1. Mr Cheater made a living.....works by famous painters.

a) devising b) faking c) pretending d) shamming
2.A sculpture by Rodin fetched more than two million dollars at the last month,
a) auction b) gallery c) museum d) sale
3. The.......of Rembrandt's paintings finishes next week.
a) demonstration b) exhibition c) show d) spectacle
4. They thought the painting was genuine but it turned out to be...
a) a facsimile b) an imitation c) a replica d) a reproduction
5. Mr Adventurous has taken painting since he retired,
a) down b) in c) over d) up
Mr Vernix is the greatest.... expert on techniques of painting.
a) alive b) live c) living d) nowadays
7. On examination by experts, the picture turned out to be a....
a) fabrication b) fake c) fraud d) sham
8. In the.......right-hand corner of the portrait there is a flower.
a) front b) high c) top d) up
9. He is sometimes considered to be an outstanding artist, but I consider his work to be quite
a) common b) intermediate c) mediocre d) moderate
10. All visitors are requested to.... with the regulations,
a) agree, b) assent c) comply d) consent

11. He made some...............sketches which would serve as guides when he painted the actual landscape.
a) elementary b) introductory c) preliminary d) primary

12 Admission to the gallery is.................except on Saturdays and Sundays when a charge of one dollar is
made.
a) allowed b) free c) nothing d) paid
13. The paintings are hung in heavy gold...............
a) easels b) frames c) fringes d) rims
14. This beautiful portrait is......to Rubens.
a) assigned b) attached c) attributed d) prescribed
15. He earns his living by......works of art.
a) recovering b) renewing c) restoring d) reviving
16. That landscape is somewhat......of Rembrandt's early work.
a) memorable b) mindful c) reminiscent d) similar
17. The portrait you see here is a very good.....of my mother.
a) appearance b) likeness c) reproduction d) resemblance
18. He said he had never.....across a painting which pleased him more.
a) come b) happened c) seen d) viewed
19. I made it quite clear that I had no.....of selling the portrait.
a) aim b) intention c) meaning d) purpose

II.Fill in the blanks with prepositions:

1) Eugene felt that he knew little or nothing about figure and anatomy and had better workthat.
2)He was a little astonished to learn from a printed prospectus given him that the life class
meant nude models to work.............................................................
3)He worked much.......................................................................portraits.
4)A long time passed before he started work.............................this picture.
5)The sketch is distinguished.........................................................fidelity and beauty.
6)The lightness of touch, airiness, lends greater veracity...............the event represented the
canvas.
7)His work relies.......................................................................... its success its individual
statement of form and colour.
8)...................................................................................................the extreme distance is seen a
village church towering above the humble dwellings..................its vicinity.
9) He indulged...reckless experiments...colour.

Fill the gaps:

Emotions in art
Beginning 1)___with___ the early treatises on the arts by Plato and Aristotle,
2)_thinkers_____ in the western tradition have often commented on the close connection
3)_between_____ the arts and the emotions. Plato and Aristotle both thought that the arts
evoke or arouse emotions, although for Plato this was a weakness in the arts,
4)_whereas_____ for Aristotle it was a strength. Indeed, as we shall see later, Aristotle thought
that the evocation of emotion by dramatic 5)__works____ of tragedy can help to teach us 6)-
_although_____life. In later eras the 7)___emphasis___ shifted from the evocation to the
representation of emotion, although the two ideas were not always clearly distinguished. In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was a commonplace that the 8)__arts___ of painting,
poetry, and music were to represent or “paint the passions.” Later still in the Romantic and
post-Romantic periods, the emphasis shifted 9)___again___: the Romantic artist typically saw
himself 10)__as____expressing his own 11)__emotions____ in his work rather than
representing emotions or evoking emotions in other people. If the audience experienced
emotion on reading or looking at or listening to the artist’s work, then it was by 12)__means___
of recreating in themselves the emotional experience of the artist captured in the work. Most
13)_theories____ in the history of western aesthetics which link art to emotion have
14)_assumed____ that the emotions evoked or represented or expressed by the arts are ordinary
ones 15)__from____ life, such as pity, fear, joy, sadness, love, etc.