Classical Art, also known as Classicism, refers to paintings and sculptures created by the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Decorative arts began around 1050 B.C. in Ancient Greece, and was later passed down to the Ancient Romans. Classical Art set the precedent for much of Western Art, including themes that would appear in art for centuries. Many speculate that the look of Classical Art is the direct result of Greek ideologies. In particular, Greeks seemed to have a refined view of humans, and, in particular, believed perfection was possible for humans.
Many scholars analyze Classical art and see a restraint on the part of the artists. There is a conservatism with which Classical artists generally paint. The paintings show restraint in the expression of themes. Greek artists also generally went to great lengths ensuring their paintings were physically rational. This means that the proportions of objects, people, and backgrounds were carefully mastered.
Panel Paintings on wooden boards were very respected, in addition to sculptures and wall paintings. Paintings generally depicted portraits, figural scenes, and still-lifes. Paintings were done with wax, but not many survived to the present day. Greek art spread to Egypt and Italy, in addition to other cultures that adopted certain hallmarks of classical art. Throughout the millennia, there have been many classical revivals, most notably in the Middle Ages and again a couple centuries afterward, which is often referred to as Neoclassicism.
Dada and Surrealism were two movements that developed as a reaction to the confusion following World War I. Dada started in the neutral city of Zurich in Switzerland immediately following the end of the War. (Documents, 2001) Dada, however, was not intended to be a new art movement. According to Tristan Tzara, one of the founders of the movement, “The beginnings of Dada were not the beginnings of art, but of disgust.” (Documents, 2001) People were confused and angry after the Great War, and their rage fueled their artistic creativity. They sought to break down conventions in the arts in order to bring forth a new, improved culture. Even the name “dada” mocked the time period because the name for the movement was decided upon by randomly choosing a word from the dictionary. (About Art History, 2003) The Dada movement made thorough use of obscenities, satire, humor, puns, and everyday objects (usually with a little tweaking) to evoke feelings of rage or shock. (About Art History, 2003) It was whimsical and original, which is perhaps why the public enjoyed the movement while it lasted. One of the most famous artists of the Dada movement was Max Ernst. One of his most famous pieces was called “Celebes,” painted in 1921. The painting is of a creature that somewhat resembles an elephant. It shows darkness (via the colors) and mockery (disfigurement of the creature), which are key aspects of Dada art. The Dada movement subsided around 1923, which gave way for a similar movement to prosper in its place: surrealism.
Max Ernst, Celebes (1921)
Surrealism was similar to the Dada movement because it was meant to defy the reason and logic in response to the seemingly unreasonable World War I. In contrast, surrealism focused on positive expression. (Surrealist, 1998) Surrealism also employed the use of subconscious and unexpected juxtapositions, especially with certain imagery, to stress the illogicality of the times. The movement shifted to include dream-like sequences, which combined aspects of subconscious thought (since dreams supposedly reveal our deeper thoughts) and irrationality (since anything can happen in a dream, even if it does not make sense in the real world). (Dada and Surrealism, 2006) Surrealism was said to have two types: automatism (Dalí) and veristic surrealism (Picasso). Automatism focused on art being abstract and less analytical because the subconscious relies on feeling, not analysis. Veristic surrealism focused on the images they created to be metaphorical, as a bridge between the feelings evoked by the image and the image’s counterpart in the real world. (Go Surreal) One prominent artist of the Surrealism movement was Salvador Dalí. One of his most famous paintings was “The Persistence of Memory,” which he painted in 1931. It shows positivity (via the bright colors), yet subconscious and dreamlike imagery through the distortion of the clocks.
Salvador Dalí, The Persistence Of Memory (1931)
Citations
1. “Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection.” Sept 23, 2009. <http://www.artic.edu/reynolds/essays/hofmann.php>
2. “Dada Art History 101 Basics.” Sept 23, 2009. <http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/dada.htm>
The Victorian era covers the 64-year span of Queen Victoria’s reign of England, from 1837 to 1901. During this time, many developments and advances were being made in areas such as science and society. These advances made Britain the most powerful, modern, and wealthy nation in the world at the time (HuntFor). The Victorian art movement consisted of many different art movements: Classicism turned into Neoclassicism, which was followed by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The realistic style of painting of Classicism gradually changed “through a series of influences which brought in the use of brighter colors and more emotional strokes, which replaced an attention to realistic detail in shadow and form,” (Bliss) and resulted in the Post-Impressionism movement.
The art of the Victorian era was produced by artists who focused on England’s “high-fashion and modern elegance” (Bliss). This resulted in many paintings of high-class social events in strong colors, which would show the emotion of the event. In addition, paintings of the countryside were common. Most English people at the time could relate more to the countryside than to the high-class events, and so paintings of the countryside became popular. The idea of painting nature, and not the high-class social events, was what caused the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to form. This group, formed by Dante Rossetti and William Holman Hunt in 1848, wanted to recapture the style of painting that preceded Raphael, an artist of the Italian Renaissance (HuntFor). The artists of the Brotherhood, which eventually expanded to seven members, focused on painting directly from nature, resulting in colorful and detailed paintings.
The expressionist movement is one of the more modern movements, starting in the late 19th century through early 20th century. Expressionism is an art form in which the artist attempts to portray not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in him. The artist accomplishes this through distortion, exaggeration, primitiveness, and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application of formal elements.
Unlike Impressionism, its goals were not to reproduce the impression suggested by the surrounding world, but to strongly impose the artist’s own sensibility to the world’s representation. The expressionist artist substitutes to the visual object reality his own image of this object, which he feels as an accurate representation of its real meaning. The search of harmony and forms is not as important as trying to achieve the highest expression intensity, both from the aesthetic point of view and according to idea and human critics.
Expressionism started mostly in Germany, in 1910. As an international movement, expressionism has also been thought of as inheriting from certain medieval artforms and, more directly, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and the fauvism movement.
The most well known German expressionists are Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Lionel Feininger, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein; the Austrian Oskar Kokoschka, the Czech Alfred Kubin and the Norvegian Edvard Munch are also related to this movement. During his stay in Germany, the Russian Kandinsky was also an expressionism addict.
Scream by Edvard Munch
Credit: Pioch, Nicolas. “Expressionism.” BMW Foundtion, 2002. Web. <http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/tl/20th/expressionism.html>.
Nouveau is a word meaning “new” in French, which is precisely what this movement was. A fin-de-siècle (or end of the century) movement, art nouveau began around 1890 and ended in 1914. Samuel Bing introduced the term “art nouveau” when he opened his 1st art nouveau gallery in December of 1895 in Paris. He believed it a “movement, not style” (American Art Nouveau, Johnson), and sought to create a world-wide phenomenon out of it. Centered in Europe and parts of North America (and later traveled through Japan, China, and Middle East), it was a return to Middle Age-craftsmanship with a mixture of Gothic, Celtic, Rococco, and Japanese art influences. Both futuristic and traditional, art nouveau was a unique take on the graphic arts.
Art nouveau transcended styles; artists, designers, and architects were all in on the movement. It was seen as a rebellion against the Industrial Revolution, a late 19th century movement where machinery reigned supreme. Though the aesthetics were innovative, the mass-produced machines were draining on progression and advancement. So the soft yet sharp style that art nouveau offered was refreshing and offered many avenues for development in various aspects of art. Geoffrey Warren compared it to the female figure (All Color Book of Art Nouveau, Warren), a flowing but controlled line that contradicts by converging. Not limited to the canvas, art nouveau can be seen in posters, sculptures, type faces, lettering, book design, windows, cutlery, furniture, ceramics, stained glass, jewelry, postcards, and interior/exterior design.
Art Nouveau stained glass, furniture, and interior design
Work Cited:
Warren, Geoffrey. All Color Book of Art Nouveau. Octopus Books Ltd., 1972
Johnson, Diane Chalmers. American Art Nouveau. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., September 1979
Neoclassicism literally means “the new classicism.” It was a movement in the art world that began in 1760 and led up all the way till the 1850’s. This movement spanned across all kinds of art: painting, music, literature and sculpture. Focusing on history and going back to the classics, it began in opposition to the Rococo movement, where everything was portrayed simply based on aesthetics and no attempt at historical accuracy was made. Thus, Neoclassicism was the movement in which every detail in a painting or sculpture was meticulously constructed to be historically accurate. The artists in the Neoclassicism movement used archeological discoveries made in Pompeii and Herculaneum to guide themselves regarding what costumes, furniture etc were correct for each time period.
As Neoclassicism became more intense under the leadership of Jacques Louis David, the emphasis on austerity and simplicity became even more pronounced in paintings. Draperies and soft lines were all abandoned, as hard lines and simple backgrounds became the norm. As can be inferred, staying away from emotions was a very important part of the Neoclassicism movement, as opposed to both Rococo and the Baroque style. This art movement actually played a great role in the French Revolution, and was used to make simple and effective political statements. Jacques Louis David used Neoclassical paintings to show that the state was more important than the family. The more stoic nature of this style allowed him to do this with more ease.
It is also interesting to note that while Neoclassicism can be seen as the direct opposite of Romanticism as well, these two styles often mixed. In the paintings of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the Romantic influence can be seen in the sensual nude paintings, which still retained a certain stiffness linked to Neoclassicism.
The Byzantine Art Movement was around from the 5th century to the middle of the 15th century, when the Byzantine Empire existed. The movement originated in the Orthodox Church and spread to other regions where the church was dominant, yet remained centered in Constantinople. These regions include Russia, Greece and some slavic nations. Since the movement originated in the church, the artists were restricted by regulations that the church imposed on them. This helps to explain why practically all of the art had a religious theme.
This movement’s style, which was mainly seen in religious paintings, mosaics, buildings and icons, was characterized by bright and rich colors, mosaic tiles, solid tone or gold backgrounds and flat human figures that were often unnatural and lifeless. Placing another figure higher than the first one showed distance. There were usually two ways in which the humans were portrayed. One way featured the humans in full length, facing the front. This was to express power and authority and the people were usually gesturing meaningfully or holding symbolic objects. The rigid folds in their clothes were meant to highlight these frontal figures. The second way of drawing humans was used in illustrating religious narratives. In these images the figures are turned and are gesturing to express emotion, like distress, sympathy and others. However, the emotions were always subtle and in control. The fluid, moving folds in the clothes were meant to show movement and emotion. In decorative architecture, mosaics were used very often, covering large areas in the buildings. These mosaics were colorful and illustrated, once again, religious characters and themes. The rich colors, expensive materials such as gold and ivory and intricate patterns in this art served to show off the wealth and power of the Byzantine Empire. Even though the movement became unpopular after the fall of the empire, its influence could still be felt in other countries the movement spread to.
While the heavy and dramatic Baroque movement faded across Europe in the early eighteenth century, the Rococo artistic style was developing in France under the reign of Louis XV. It lasted through the beginning of Louis XVI’s rule in France, waxing and waning slightly later throughout the rest of Europe as Neoclassicism took hold. Although Rococo shells, scrolls and arabesques appeared first in the palaces of French royalty,the decline of absolutism that held the royalty together inspired artistic developments in the Rococo period. The unsettling ideas of John Locke and his ilk had begun to challenge the certainty and order of absolutism; this fidgeting of the intellectual community helped engender new artistic ideas as well. Lightness distinct from the Baroque period, an emphasis on natural curves, patterns, asymmetric design, a playful attitude, the theme of the return to nature, and an abundance of abstract foliage all characterize the Rococo style. Contemporaries called it “modern style” to contrast with Baroque (Pignatti 10). For all these traits, however, it maintained the habit of excess in the upper classes of France and the many countries that sought to emulate its court.
As art scholar Terisio Pignatti notes, although the term Rococo cannot encompass all the results of the “intense creativity both in spiritual and in practical matters” throughout Europe during the first half of the 18th century, it does include a vast development of “similar imaginations… in similar directions” in art in that period on the continent (Pignatti 7 – 8). In architecture, interior design, and paintings these elements appeared first in France, especially at Versailles and other royal chateaux that were built, renovated, decorated, and furnished at the time. French painters Antoine Watteau, known for his depictions of pastoral scenes, and François Boucher, a favorite of the king’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, were especially known for their work in the Rococo style. Giovanni Pellegrini and Giovanni Tiepolo of Venice were renowned for their paintings and frescos, as well.
Boucher’s Diana Resting exemplifies many aspects of Rococo art, with its lightness and asymmetry. For a more complete idea of Rococo art, however, a look at the architecture is extremely important. You can check http://www.pitt.edu/~tokerism/0040/rococo.html for a few examples.
Work Cited:
Pignatti, Terisio. The Age of Rococo. London: Hamlyn, 1969. Print.
Work Consulted:
Kimball, Fiske. The Creation of the Rococo. New York: W.W. Norton, 1964. Print.
Dear Class
Here are some sources you could use to prepare yourself for our Opera visit.
I have also loaded the full score of the Opera onto our Media library and we will look at it in class.
Enjoy
The Brooklyn Bridge is fairly new to me. I have walked across many times in the past year, a fun but occasionally grueling task
This past summer I worked a paid internship at a media company based in Brooklyn so I became familiar with travel and the surroundings. Also, my mother works in Brooklyn now so I’ve driven over the bridge as well.
The Brooklyn Bridge is a very popular tourist spot. If I would have taken this photo midday or early afternoon there would have been a flock of tourists, but in the early morning it was desolate, sans some runners and biking commuters.
I think that in Hassam’s painting the people weren’t tourists as much as everyday pedestrians traveling, for free, across the bridge. Although winter time, 1892 was not the ost prosperous time. Hassam’s painting captures what is now a firm historical piece of New York (with no toll!) while incorporating the flurry poverty of the time.
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