Shared Flashcard Set

Details

Art History Test 4
Final Test
28
Art History
Undergraduate 2
04/20/2016

Additional Art History Flashcards

 


 

Cards

Term
[image]
Definition
  1. Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatti, 1785, French, Neoclassical, oil painting

 

  • Revolutionary in form and content

  • Depicts a scene from a Roman legend about a dispute between two warring cities, Rome and Alba Longa

  • Importance of masculine self-sacrifice for one's country

  • Sons giving their swords to their father (Horatii family)

    • Pledging to their father that they will win the fight with dignity

  • All of the people/figures in the painting are arranged on a horizontal line

  • the three men on the left are pledging to their father that they will fight with dignity and are willing to die

  • Women are in agony because they know that they are going to lose someone in this fight

    • all the women are either a sister or wife of the brothers and are the only evidence that suffering will occur

  • King wanted his people to stop complaining, instead they saw it as a need for a revolution

    • King removed it and put it in the basement
Term
[image]
Definition

Eugene Delacroix, The 28th July, Liberty Leading the People, 1830, oil on canvas, French, Romanticism, oil painting

 

  • Commemorates the french revolution

  • People’s faces and outfits are contemporary

    • This is a real event, not a historical depiction

  • Woman, man of color, and a woman are all fighting. They share a common goal

  • First time in art that we see pubic hair (guy in bottom right corner has bush peeking out)

  • The woman with the flag is a representation of freedom and victory, she steps over the dead because war is ugly/unfair, she must fight on.

  • The Statue of Liberty is based off of this painting/women to represent freedom and liberty
Term
[image]
Definition

William Henry Fox Talbot, The Open Door, 1843, British, photography

 

  • British scientist who announced his invention of photography

  • Sparked debate of photography being art vs. science

  • Photography seen as potentially being the end to painting--1839

  • Romanticist style:

    • camera is out of focus so it is fuzzy edge image

    • Mystery of the dramatic contrast
Term
[image]
Definition

Katsushika Hokusai, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” 36 Views of Mt. Fuji, 1831, Japanese, woodblock print

 

  • Fuji= former volcanic mountain that can be seen for miles

  • Not as realistic as other paintings we have looked at in the past, not intended to be realistic

  • Cartoon-like, forms are simplified

  • In the wave there is just black and blue, no shading

  • Long fishing boats have people in them but it isn’t important because it isn’t about seeing them, it’s more so about what they might have felt

  • Decorative

  • Artist repeats triangular form of Mt. Fuji and the curves of the boats and the waves throughout the painting
Term
[image]
Definition

Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1872, Impressionism, oil painting

 

  • Emergence of impressionism- presents a completely different view of the world

    • One person’s perception of their corner of the world

  • Fundamentally premised on how it felt to be present during this moment in nature

  • Exaggeration of what is in front of him

  • Makes radical decision to use brush strokes to stand out on their own (flickering brush stroke) (CRAZY!)

  • Communicates the intensity of the color, reliant on intense color to convey mood

  • Optical truth= reality of on the spot observation

  • Paints from beginning to end-- En plein air

  • Monet uses color wheel to ensure maximum intensity of colors

  • Using blue and orange  

  • Not liked by the audience
Term
[image]
Definition

Vincent Van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889, Dutch, Post-Impressionism, oil painting

 

  • Cut off his own ear

  • interested in making maximally emotion/expressive content

  • surface that is a thick surface of paint

  • blue and orange

  • dizzy repetitive brush strokes

  • sky appear full of life

  • Cypress tree appears tormented-- tree of death

  • he distorts the perspective and is on an “equal” level with the sky (for an emotional effect)

  • natural objects

    • tree-torment→ only sad part about painting

    • he creates an illusion of the wind with the repetitive brush strokes
Term
[image]
Definition

Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1887, French, Post-Impressionism, oil painting

 

  • Picture of what he sees when he looks out the window at his house

  • Mont Sainte-Victoire→ “Victory Mountain”

  • Petit cube→ geometric marks rather than brush strokes

  • Paintings are all about tension

  • whole scene fits on canvas, doesn’t encourage depth or movement

  • reinforces idea of perspective/space/dimension/tension

  • dynamic tension is what the pictures are all about

  • modern understanding of the world
Term
[image]
Definition

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, Spanish, Cubism, oil painting

 

  • painting: a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order (Picasso’s definition)

  • *Cubism*-style based on the spatial concept of the 4th dimension, known as space/time

    • the effect of a shattered mirror

  • African Mask Heads

  • Sexual anxiety

  • The hookers of Barcelona (would): Demoiselles meaning

  • Syphilis common issue at the time (penis rotting)

    • possibly portrayed in the painting

  • Beginning of movement of art to completely abstract
Term
[image]
Definition

Anonymous, Fang Tribe, Ritual Mask, 19th century, African, painted wood (sakai)

 

  • ??
Term
[image]
Definition

Vassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 28, Second Version, 1912, Russian, Non-objective abstraction, oil painting

 

  • Kandinsky-Russian immigrant to Germany

  • breaks through painter’s block

  • First time totally abstract art exists

  • makes the choice to abandon objectness

    • No identifiable objects

  • form and colors unrelated to objects in the natural world

    • forms and colors--intrinsic meanings regardless of context

    • emotional content

  • Work represents panic, confusion, and destruction

    • Use of explosive colors and forms

  • Representative of WWI which was breaking out at the time
Term
[image]
Definition

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Yellow, Red and Blue, 1927, Dutch, De Stijl, oil painting

 

  • Blocks are moving off of the campus

    • There are no black lines to contain them

  • Very calm painting

  • Hand skill plays no hand in this work and other similar works

  • Evaluating the art is deemed more important

  • tremendous optical, spiritual, and intellectual power

  • ordered, geometric world representation

    • Utopian Faith
Term
[image]
Definition

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, French, Dada, readymade sculpture

 

  • (talked about a lot)

  • Duchamp is greatest Dada artist but never pledges allegiance to it

  • More interested in ideas rather than visual product

  • Public urinal exhibited as art

  • Duchamp signs it “R. Mutt” which means “Our Mother” in German

  • Takes it out of a hardware catalog

  • This sculpture proves that just about anything can become art

    • “if anything is art, then nothing is art”

  • Icon of modern industry.. Question as to if he is celebrating it or cynical about it

  • Making some sort of reference to the Virgin Mary?

  • Urinal is turned upside down making it look like a female pelvis

  • Taking a male gendered object and making it a female object

  • Title is witty and creative, used as a hook to draw audience in

  • Without the man in front of it using it for it’s original purpose then it’s technically not a fountain
Term
[image]
Definition

Salvador Dali, Persistence of Memory, 1931, Spanish, Surrealism, oil painting

 

  • premised on your free association of the work, so no rigid meaning to it?

  • meant to make the viewer feel uncomfortable

  • uses realistic painting style to suggest that something completely non-sensical is realistic

  • some dead thing in the middle of it, melting clocks represent the irrelevance of time

    • time is relative to space
Term
[image]
Definition

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939, Mexican, Surrealism, oil painting

 

  • painted when shes going through a divorce

  • shows kahlo bleeding to death

  • has a picture of her husband at the end of her artery, aka her husband is a source of death for her

  • woman in mexican peasant dress versus a colonial woman in a traditional colonial wedding dress

  • woman as a martyr
Term
[image]
Definition

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, Number 30, 1950, American, Abstract Expressionism, mixed media

 

  • very radical announcement of the importance of the unconscious and the subconscious

  • called “drip and splatter” technique

  • in the Met

  • Wicked large, biggest work we have seen to date

  • Pollock is poor so he doesn’t use fine art materials

  • Paints on the floor, uses shitty canvas with holes in it, uses industrial house paint

  • Just throwing paint all over the canvas

  • Pollock steps into canvas while painting

  • He isn’t interested in visual art, more so ideas

  • Pollock’s appealing to surrealists

  • Emphasis on the unconscious

  • Dynamic expression, messy, chaotic

  • Important to feel fear, anxiety, or chaos when looking at this

  • What looks to be out of control is actually very rhythmic

  • Splotches of brown, white, black, very rhythmically placed throughout the painting

  • Depicting late fall when all there is is “ash and death”
Term
[image]
Definition

Mark Rothko, Orange, Red, and Red, 1962, American, Abstract Expressionism, oil painting (Sakai)

 

  • Basically just a big red picture

  • Rothko’s technique is just as radical as Pollock’s, also uses poor quality materials

  • Essentially staining color onto the canvas

  • Layers in 35-36 layers of paint

  • Apparently as your eyes keep looking at it you see more colors or something?

  • Rothko’s works almost always look like they’re illuminated from within

  • Implosion of light and color from within

  • Mood of vast and empty cosmos

  • 2 rectangles separated by a line that appear to be clouds due to their blurriness

  • Line suggests a horizon

  • Described as explosions of clouds over the landscape and a metaphor for dropping the atomic bomb

  • Emphasis on silence and meditation
Term
[image]
Definition

Christo and Jean-Claude, Running Fence, 1972-76, American, site art

 

  • outdoors directly involved in structure/meaning of work

  • husband and wife team

  • 24.5 miles long, 18 feet high fence in California and terminates in Ocean (nylon)

  • resensitization of people to their natural environment

  • fence draws attention to the land, and also to the sociological import to the fence

  • shape determined by land itself, typography of the land

  • separates nothing from nothing, middle of nowhere---is it necessary?

  • completely different work at sunrise and sunset because of how the sun hits the nylon it looks completely different

  • it also makes sound on the nylon when the wind blows, making this piece of art a musical piece too
Term
[image]
Definition

Joseph Beuys, I Like America and America Likes Me, 1974, German, performance art (Sakai)

 

  • Performance arts vs. Performing art

    • Performance art doesn’t have to be represented by art

  • This is a photograph of one of his performances that happened over the course of 2 weeks

  • Him and a wild coyote live in a studio for 2 weeks, he wraps himself in felt and and had a shepherd’s cane thing to give the idea he was one

  • Coyote trained to shit on the wall street journal (Symbolic)

  • Basically saying if two species can live together in harmony why can’t people?

  • Able to live together without any implications of violence after some time together

  • Always references the things that resurrected him (Animals, felt)

    • Biography most likely a lie
Term
[image]
Definition

Jenny Holzer, Untitled, 1989-90, American, Conceptual Art

 

  • De-emphasize the image of the work but focus on the idea behind it

  • Artist who uses words

  • Inside the Guggenheim Museum in NYC

  • Guerilla/Street artist

  • Flashing LEDs
Term
[image]
Definition

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, 1954-1958, German, International Style, skyscraper

 

  • steel frame skeleton

  • glass curtain wall

  • Symbolizing all that is new

  • Style is picked up internationally

  • revealed skeleton

  • stops building when he feels the horizontal and the vertical are in balance

  • on the top it is vented and gives it the impression that the building is done. It contributes to the lightness of the building

  • includes a plaza to ensure sunlight when you enter the building

  • drops entrance to our scale

  • dominant building type of the first half of the 20th century
Term
[image]
Definition

Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum, Spain, 1993-1997, American, Post-Modern architecture

 

  • takes brutalism aesthetic and makes them into extraordinary buildings

  • curvilinear forms

  • rejects everything architecture has been about to this point

  • the building seems to grow like pedals

  • Cartoon-like

  • use of titanium as a material→ has as much strength as steel but much lighter

  • it is architecture as a sculpture
Term
[image]
Definition

Damien Hirst, For the Love of God, 2007, British, Post-modern, sculpture (Sakai)

 

  • Platinum cast of an actual human skull

  • surface is encrusted with 8,601 perfect diamonds

  • took the artist $22 million to produce it, and the asking price is $80 million

  • death which is the subject of this work is also the subject of many of Hirst’s works

  • Claiming victory over death

    • Preservation of the skull with beautiful surface of diamonds

    • Money beats death

  • question as to if this work is critiquing or participating in the immortality of the art world

  • Hirst often uses decaying animal/human parts in his work

  • Relying on the excess of these materials

  • Title comes from Hirst’s mother who said “Damien for the love of God what’s left for you to do now?”
Term
[image]
Definition

Banksy, Spray Art $60, 2013, British Spray Painting

 

  • Banksy is wanted by the police in most nations (including the United States)

  • Anonymous British graffiti artist

  • Question as to if Banksy is a man or woman

  • works are satirical, usually anti-war

  • Went to NYC for a month and every day he etched graffiti in some public place

  • None of his works are sold, he doesn’t want to sell them except below

  • he had someone else sell his work for $60 each and people would pass it by and not be interested because no one knew it was banksy

    • no one bought anything

    • his work that people know is his is sold for thousands

    • the next day imposters would try and sell the same work and then people started buying it
Term
[image]
Definition

David Smith, Cubi XVIII (18), 1963-1964, American, Abstract Expressionism, sculpture

 

  • Major abstract expressionist artist who never pledges allegiance to abstract expressionism

  • Smith responsible for the revival of sculptures

  • One of the smallest works ever of his (his sculptures are huge, meant to be metaphors and compete with giant old trees in the landscape)

  • Interested in geometric shape

  • Mood of implicit angst

  • This work and works like these by Smith are essentially defying logic

  • No way to make sense of how the blocks on this sculpture remain stable

  • Frozen moment of anxiety

  • Amalgam of Pollock and Rothko

  • Welded aluminum and stainless steel (not used in art before this)

  • Commitment to modern materials
Term
[image]
Definition

Andy Warhol, Elvis I and II, 1964, American, Pop, silkscreen

 

  • Warhol: What you see is what you get, nothing below the surface

  • Stolen from a movie poster, very impersonal, indifferent

  • Uses silk screening, as a commercial technique

  • He could produce thousands of copies without losing any parts of the work

  • Use of repetition

  • Suggests that identity fades over time and loses meaning

  • fading identity of our pop stars very relevant

  • he is wearing make up

    • he is mixing macho masculinity with a man wearing make up
Term
[image]
Definition

Faith Ringgold, Flag for the Moon, 1969, American, Protest Art, oil painting

 

  • we should not look through the flag, which is why she made it a pop art painting--you do not need to look through/linger across pop art to get the meaning

  • stars said die and the stripes say nigger and shows that racism was big at this time
Term
[image]
Definition

Eva Hesse, No Title, 1969, American, Minimalism, Sculpture

 

  • went to the hardware store, got rope and hung it fairly randomly in the art gallery. She is writing in space with rope

  • she was on the kids train during the holocaust and sent away from her parents but by some miracle her parents survived and reunited with her

  • Finds her mother hanging from a noose after she killed herself...reason for the ropes
Term
[image]
Definition

Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1974-79, American, feminist sculpture

 

  • Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space

  • the triangle is essentially a metaphor for a dinner table, she crafted all of the dinner plates, runners, cups, etc. herself

    • 39 place settings

    • Each setting represents an important woman in history (ex: Virginia Woolf), either historical or mythological figures

    • Invited them to this dinner so she can hear what they have to say and see the beauty and range of our heritage--one we have not yet gotten the opportunity to know

  • When she begins this work, basically nothing is known about women’s history

  • equilateral triangle to represent equality

  • In the ground area between the tables she inscribed the names of 999 other women

  • Very controversial at the time and still controversial, essentialism (characteristics that join a group of individuals)

  • Condemned as lesbian and pornographic art

  • Plates are shaped in order to represent female genitals

  • Raised a lot of political issues
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