Midterm Notes for Art History PDF

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Very useful midterm notes with alternate/revised information...

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Midterm Format Slide identification: You are asked to identify a work of art on the screen by its author, title, and date (within 5 years). 6 IDs, 3 points each, 30 sec each; total 18 points, 3 minutes Short essays on individual works of art: You are asked to identify a work of art on the screen (author, title, date) and analyze it in detail based on the discussion in class and in the readings. 2 essays, 16 points each, 15 min each; total 32 points, 30 min Image comparisons: You are asked to identify two works of art on the screen and discuss them in relation to each other by comparing and contrasting them, while referring to the material covered in class and in the readings. 2 pairs of works, 25 points for each comparison, 20 minutes each; total 50 points, 40 min.  Brought together in terms of similarity and difference Artistic, Historical, Contextual (based on both textbook and PDFs)  WHY work is significant, write down as much as you remember in complete sentences Important Concepts to hit: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Representation – use of signs and symbols to represent something else Context Medium Materiality – time, space, process, participation Format/Size – shape and proportion of support Body Space Commodity Public Sphere Line Geometries/formal echos Color Organization of forms in 3D space Relation to viewer Temporal Extension

-isms:  NY Dada, Berlin Dada, Zurich Dada o Chaos, the hallmark of dada  neoplasticism o

abstract painting which used only horizontal and vertical lines and primary colours

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futurism o worked to place Italian art at the forefront of the avant-garde De Stijl o “each art was to ‘realize’ its own ‘nature’ by purging itself of everything that was not specific to it, by reveling its materials and codes, and in doing so by working towards the institution of a ‘universal plastic language’” Bois 102 Avant-garde o Avant-garde (Peter Burger): Critique of the status of art in the bourgeois society as defined by the concept of autonomy Integration (or reintegration) of art into the praxis of life o “And so, in order to return sensation to our limbs, in order to make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony, man has been given the tool of art...By ‘enstranging objects and complicating form, the device of art makes perception long and ‘laborious.’” (6) o “Art is a means of experiencing the process of creativity. The artifact itself is quite unimportant.” (6) Suprematism – superior because it is not tied down by anything; INFINITE Constructivism – began in 1921 and aimed to realign avant-garde art to the productive demands of building up the new, post-revolutionary society. going from ‘removed from life’ to real experimentation.

Important Definitions Modernity (broad conditions of existence, both material and psychological) [political, economic, subjective, spectacular] – e.g. Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877 & Georges Seurat, Sunday Afternoon on the Grande Jatte, 1884-86 (note, a study of this was made beforehnad :o) Modernization (processes of political, economic, and social development) Modernism (a set of cultural practices that simultaneously reflected and shaped the experience of modernity) Avant-garde (Peter Burger: as self-criticism of art in bourgeois society, its autonomy, in an attempt to reintegrate art into the praxis of life)

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Image List for Twentieth-Century Art 1. Henri Matisse, Le Bonheur de Vivre, 1906

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Fauvism, term applied by external critics – means beast – separated color from the descriptive element – vivid, wild colors and rough brushwork 1905 showcase in Paris shocked Parisian art world- bright vibrant colors Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Grande Jatte comparison ○ Both are figures in a landscape ○ Seurat’s work is surreal, but not quite as surreal; they both disturb normal representation ○ Seurat uses rigid verticals, but Matisse’s paintings are all about the curves ○ Many of the colors in Matisse’s painting are the same as Seurat’s, but the colors are applied in broader areas and are more saturated/monolithic ○ Seurat’s is a historically specific painting, but Matisse’s is more atemporal Color is very central to composition, and balance is important Flat planes of unmodulated pure colors, violent crashes of primary hues, thick contours, deformed anatomies Positive vs negative spaces  biggest figures aren’t in the front and gets smaller as it goes back Central point of attention is near the center; the group in the circle is framed by the trees, a triangular archway. There are two horizontal lines (one the shoes and one the horizon), several different frame (growing set of diagonals that lead to the negative space occupied by the figures)  Why doesn’t the group of figures shaped in a cirlce keep our attention? No Focal Point. yellow is dense and demands attention, contrasting, complementary colors like orange and green make the colors more vivid colors echo

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in different areas. Peripheral vision makes it hard to focus on just one attention point, non-hierarchical There is sort of a nested triangle He uses variation in size of the human bodies to represent special depth However, there is a figure at the very bottom middle that disturbs the pattern sensuous curves of figures resemble curves of trees using color not as a means of representation but rather as a means of EXPRESSION Eye goes in expanding circles from the center, as a stone dropped in a pond and producing ripples – Leo Steinberg behind the happy theme is a direct connection between physical beauty, visual pleasure, and the origin of desire Certain forms suppressed and de-anatomized. Ex. the couple kissing in the foreground, two bodies virtually melded with a single head Fantasy of the non-western as an alternative of the western modernity and the idea of the Other Colonialist impulse → and the idea of modernity the montage-like nature of composition with disjunctive transitions is like a phantasmic screen with contradictory sex drives, corresponding to Freud’s polymorphous infantile sexuality Parricidal formally, stylistically, and thematically  opens the gates of 20th century art

2. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street, Dresden, 1908

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Dresden as a vital but nervous confrontation  huddled masses border the picture, women w/ mask-like faces gaze at us, unreal colors, uneasy perspectives Youth and rebellion, not just with Western art but a progression on history that leads to the chaos of the modern experience, rebelling through primitive of the other (anything non-western) masks on face represent alienation of individual pink as negative space, sort of a return to the past with a modern twist ○ suggests three-dimensionality small girl in center is focal point of the painting, the pink envelops her character ○ diagonal line leads to little girl primitivism is part of a cultural hierarchical impulse (sort of othering), but also as a way of rejecting the western tradition ○ Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from nonWestern or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics – many of which were idealized and manipulated to fit the artists’ imaginations of what these foreign nations would look like ○ Color Inspiration from Japanese prints and African paintings “retrograde, but revolutionary” People obsessed with Nietzsche ○ questions of morality ISOLATION despite the crowdedness of the painting psychological angst and isolation in the modern world, industrialization, alienation distorted colors – darkness and misery and red and green, distorted space and lurid orange, tinged with anxiety, “spatial dread” and “inner unrest” current avenue of green/blue that isolates also unites the urban dwellers in anxious way colors pop; Aggressive; not the beauty of Fauvism; RAW; theatrical lighting half man in the composition the way in which men observe women – like prostitutes ○ focus of the male gaze movement, dynamism, experimentation, nothing is stable bourgeois women, image of feminity that becomes the face of the crowd Reference of non-western art , subjectivity no longer legible, face and clothing same kind of surface. Legible on outside, subsuming the subjectivity “no architecture”; space shaped by changing crowd; a city is built by the city and the shifting masses

3. Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913

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Musculature/armor like Pronounced sense of motion  creates a very strong diagonal, body lines up with back leg. Additional element in the head that further emphasizes the diagonal that makes the diagonal aim pushing forward motion, exaggerated masculinity ● Muscle vs skeletal structure, automaton like ● No arms and diminished portion of upper body suggest wings and gives more possibility of statue in relation to its movement ● Depicts movement/dynamism, but it is in stasis  tension between stasis and dynamism ○ weight of foundations at feet ● “synthesis of oppositions” – man vs machine, tension between human and mechanical, robot/amphibious figure ● Inserts fluidity of perception into static representation ● Destabilizing the empirical view of the world ○ Signifier vs signified, space of change ● Futurism ○ courage, audacity, revolt, fearlessness, love of danger ○ beauty of speed, synthesia and kinethesia ○ destroy museums, libraries, academies; condemn past culture; integrate art with advanced technology, even warfare ○ excited by work, pleasure, riot ○ the male body and psyche needs to be weaponized into this omnipresent, cruel, mechanical being There is no beauty other than in struggle 4. Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, 1907 (WILL NOT BE ON SHORT ESSAY)  ●

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 Proto-cubist work (say which cubist it is) Gaze, 4. tension between 2-dimensionality and 3-dimensionality a. A certain type of layering in between the people 5. Fruit in foreground evoking the tradition of the still-life a. Fruit being laid out as seductive element, similar to the women b. Scene in a brothel, that Picasso decontextualizes 6. Depicts a “moment of reveal”(/encounter??) 7. The table that the fruit is on has a diagonal 8. Has a similar vertical nude as in Joy of Life by Matisse 9. No aerial perspective in either 10. circling arabesque 11. apotropaic stance 12. faces like masks; somewhat devoid of expression a. Mbuya Mask, Pende ppl b. Resembles Picasso’s painting of Gertrude Stein – v defined nose etc. 13. Sign = signifier + signified a. Sign vs. referent b. Signs: Iconic, indexical, symbolic

Reduction of certain palettes, spacial surfaces, reduction to simplified platter of _ Cubism lies between primitivism  Radical shift in the face, some scholars suggest that it’s literally showing picasso’s interest in the non-western  Proliferation of basic geometric shapes that describes both the figures and the background  The color becomes the differentiation of the figure from the background o Where the pink stands out from the background  Color functions to differentiate background from the body but at the same time color creates confusion with the echo between the two background and body Composition study for Avignon vs. Avignon  Two figures disappear that are both clothed and both males 7 o o

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Figure in the middle is the figure of the sailor, well-versed with language of the sin Other clothed in brown, is being initiated to sin. In some drawings comes in with a book and a skull (he’s a medical student) No longer a narrative temporality o Here the temporality is immediate and atemporal in a way that is an instance of an encounter o One eye focused on us  We are the focus of their attention  Gaze shows the temporality that is suspended  Cannibalism western tradition in the nude and still life o Radically redefines it  Fruit connates sexuality and consumption o The watermelon is the same as the mask o The colored stripes on the peach is on the women’s body o Confrontational quality that implicates us o In demoiselles, their gaze is the same as in Manet’s Olympia  Freud → the idea of the screen, the gaze, and the imprentable screen o The screen is masculinity in context to modernity o Picasso defined by their masculinity as a social construct as it relates to privileges and points in social access o Modernity strives for subjectivity and representation  Redefining femininity as opposite for masculinity  Penetrating gaze o Produces temporality, duration that is atemporal (extends beyond time), there is a spatial aspect to it, helps spatial confusion in the work. Complex 3d to 2d and 3d becomes an extension into the space of the viewer. That space of the 3d that is collapsed is given to the viewer o Confrontation engagement of the encounter o Picasso is that subject and so is the viewer of the painting

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5. Pablo Picasso, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910

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Drained away color  helps represent volume with light and shadow, contingent on the idea of light hitting the surface 3-dimensionality is taken away Representation Relationship between light and dark, line and color, light and shadow keep the dimensionality. The grid is a deductive structure. The line becomes subsumed to the compositional function as the function of the grid Built in semantic blocks, meaning is dependent on its placement in a system Cubism is a language that Picasso develops as a way of deconstruction of the tools of painting, as well as its expressive means  cubism is not interested in abstractionism. basic building blocks from which representation can be construction Elasticity of iconography  B and P are trying to open the space between the signifier (form) and signified (meaning) He described Kahnweiler with a network of shimmering, semitransparent surfaces that merge with the atmosphere around him. Forms are fractured into various planes and faceted shapes and presented from several points of view. Despite the portrait’s highly abstract character, however, Picasso added attributes to direct the eye and focus the mind: a wave of hair, the knot of a tie, a watch chain. Out of the flickering passages of brown, gray, black, and white emerges a rather traditional portrait pose of a seated man, his hands clasped in his lap. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler was a banker, writer, publisher, and art dealer who became the pioneering champion of Cubism

Braque became interested in “how do we reconcile what we see and what is in the world?” Braque and Picasso work closely together, and their works bear a lot of resemblance Grid becomes the deductive structure Rectangle format becomes the primary format in painting - a grid Both are working towards the idea of a shared pictorial language o

Add representational elements that helps us refigure the composition into some kind of signified

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I.e. Picasso, Kahnweiler → the hands at the bottom, the mustache at the top  Allows us to reconfigure the painting into something with meaning o As soon as it starts to appear to go into abstractionism it goes into signified? o Idea of an anchor = ?? o Representation engages with the binary of signifier and signified and the space between them o Icon - icons that relate through resemblance  I.e. trash icon on computer looks like a trash bin o Anchors hold the signifier and signified without holding them together  B interested in establishing a productive relationship between 2D and ___ o The grid always articulates the pictorial surface  The grid is always carefully articulated in Braque  Set of overlapping lines that articulate the pictorial surface o Brushstroke more disciplined than Picasso  In P we get more of a sense of air because there is more of an emphasis on the tension between frontal planes and other position planes o Conates more embodied experience  P actives the tension rather than harmonizing it like B o P more interested in the painting as a semantic structure  Painting is a means of communication  P maps the painting as the moment in which the signifier and signified become intertwined  P mutates signs that travels through the painting  Everytime the shape appears in the painting, it changes it’s meaning  Same element migrates thru the pictorial structure Green and Yellow Painting  B brushstrokes are enfolded into the systematic structure  P becomes interested with the sickle → to create his own language o From a composition to a composition → sickle o P sickle is used very rigorous not indexical, its meaning is determined both in the compositions position and Picasso’s work as a whole o

Unity of the surface: constant uniformity within the painting Cubism is supposed to be difficult and challenging. It forces you to learn and to look, and become habituated to that language

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6. Hugo Ball in his “Magical Bishop” costume, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, June 1916

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Manifestation of Zurich Dada ○ bases: Zurich, NY, Paris, Berlin, Cologne, Hanover ○ ore belief: that war had exposed the corruption of bourgeois civilization – especially its language which came with heavy political, social, religious, and artistic ramifications. Attacked all norms, even their own – esp. through performance,s exhibitions, and publications in Zurich ○ Switzerland drew in poets, painters, filmmakers due to its wartime neutrality; incl. James Joyce performance art ○ carried onto stage, talks in gibberish, carried off stage “like a magical bishop” Rejects system of language Materialist, breaks down language (reductionist into sound) ○ “A line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language” – Hugo Ball ○ sought to release language from its usual syntax and semantics and transform it into raw sound Nihilist gesture of rejection Religious connotation (looks like a pope hat) Absurdist, parodies the mechanized vision of futurism Mobility is stripped away, guy had to be carried on and off stage What constitutes an object “dada is as senseless as nature” – Arp, some pompously bold claims imo lolz ○ “dada is for infinite sense and definite means” – dada is as full of meaning and infinite in sense as nature is

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7. Hans Arp, Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance), 1916-

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Work + story is the locus of art ○ – the process of creating the piece is a dynamic, non-traditional ones Looks like its in grid despite randomness Grid is the deductive structure, removed presence of artist subjectivity The ripping follows a logic dictated by the material ○ Inherent limitations placed on the work by the nature of the materials used. Denies the artist subjectivity Deductive structure of the grid is still followed. The arrangement is Unlikely to be attributed to chance alone

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8. Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

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A urinal that was flipped on its side and signed “R. Mutt 1917” Reminiscent of the black square, “restaging” The industrialization and commodification of everyday life wanted to remove the relationship between an artist’s fame/reputation and the value of the work itself; by now Duchamp was already an established name in the art world. “The category of art as institution” – avante-garde movements criticized the autonomy of art in “devloped borgeois society” ○ attacked the institution of autonomous art in New York and Paris Duchamp championed the self-critique of art. material shapes form used chance to decenter authorship “what is art?” “how do we know it” “who determines it?” – epistemological questions

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9. Marcel Duchamp, Tu m’, 1918

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His last painting, he abandons the medium later Nihilistic v...