Jonathan Morgan
Adjunct Professor of Art at Lone Star College, PhD candidate at IDSVA
Mound C-1 (The Great Pyramid)
La Venta, Mexico
c. 350 BCE, Olmec
Jadeite Mask
c. 900-400 BCE
Olmec
Colossal Head
(Monument 1)
La Venta, Mexico
c. 900-400 BCE
Olmec
Olmec Rubber Ball
Ball Court
Copán, Honduras
738 CE, Mayan
Teotihuacán
Ciudad de México
c. 50-250 CE
Castillo
Chichén Itzá, Mexico
c. 800-900 CE, Maya
Tikal Temple 1 (aka Temple of the Giant Jaguar)
Tikal, Guatemala
c. 732 CE, Maya
The founding of Tenochtitlán,
(folio 2 recto of the Codex Mendoza)
from Mexico City, Mexico
1541–1542 CE
Aztec/Mexica
Ink and color on paper
Mictlantecuhtli and Quetzalcoatl (folio 56 of the Borgia Codex)
from Puebla or Tlaxcala, Mexico
ca. 1400–1500 CE | Aztec/Mexica | Mineral and vegetable pigments on deerskin
Templo Mayor
(Reconstruction view with cutaway)
Tenochtitlan, Mexico City, Mexico
Aztec/Mexica
ca. 1400-1500 CE
Coatlicue
from Tenochtitlán, Mexico City, Mexico
Aztec/Mexica
ca. 1487–1520 CE
Cliff Palace
Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
c. 1150-1300 CE, Ancestral Puebloan
Pueblo Bonito
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
mid-9th to mid-12th century CE, Ancestral Puebloan
Untitled
Donald Judd
1969 CE
Brass and colored fluorescent Plexiglass on steel brackets
Mas o Menos (More or Less)
Frank Stella
1964 CE | Metallic powder in acrylic emulsion on canvas
Untitled
Frank Stella
1966 CE
The Nominal Three (to William of Ockham)
Dan Flavin
1963 CE | Fluorescent lights
"It is what it is, and it ain’t nothin’ else. . . . There is no overwhelming spirituality you are supposed to come into contact with. . . . It’s in a sense a “get-in-get-out” situation. And it is very easy to understand. One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find."
- Dan Flavin
Die
Tony Smith
1962 CE | Steel
"I just picked up the phone and ordered it."
-Tony Smith on the making of Die
Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?
Richard Hamilton
1956 CE
Collage
Hopeless
Roy Lichtenstein
1963 CE | Oil on canvas
Oh, Jeff … I Love You, Too … But …
Roy Lichtenstein
1964 CE | Oil on canvas
Green Coca-Cola Bottles
Andy Warhol
1962 CE
Oil on canvas
Campbell's Soup Cans
Andy Warhol
1962 CE | Synthetic polymer paint on paper
Campbell's Soup Cans (Tomato Soup)
Andy Warhol
1962 CE
Synthetic polymer paint on paper
Marilyn Diptych
Andy Warhol
1962 CE | Synthetic polymer paint on paper
Gold Marilyn
Andy Warhol
1962 CE
Synthetic polymer paint on paper
Floor Cake
Claes Oldenburg
1962 CE | Canvas and polymer paint
Plug
Claes Oldenburg
1970 CE | Painted steel
Spoonbridge with Cherry
Claes Oldenburg
1988 CE | Painted steel
Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks
Claes Oldenburg
1969 CE (reworked, 1974) | Painted steel, aluminum, and fiberglass
Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks
Claes Oldenburg
Canyon
Robert Rauschenberg
1959 CE
L.H.O.O.Q.
Marcel Duchamp
1919 CE
Pencil on paper reproduction (postcard) of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2
Marcel Duchamp
1912 CE
Oil on canvas
Fountain
Marcel Duchamp
1917 CE
Porcelain
No, not rejected. A work can't be rejected by the Independents. It was simply suppressed. I was on the jury, but I wasn't consulted, because the officials didn't know that it was I who had sent it in; I had written the name "Mutt" on it to avoid connection with the personal. The Fountain was simply placed behind a partition and, for the duration of the exhibition, I didn't know where it was. I couldn't say that I had sent the thing, but I think the organizers knew it through gossip. No one dared mention it. I had a falling out with them, and retired from the organization. After the exhibition, we found the Fountain again, behind a partition, and I retrieved it!
-Marcel Duchamp, 1971
Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it.
He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.
From The Richard Mutt Case, 1917 CE:
Fountain, (second version)
Marcel Duchamp
1950 CE
Glazed earthenware
Sold in 1999 at Sotheby's auction house to a private collector...
...for $1.7 million
That's equal to $3.35 million in 2024
Fountain, (2/8)
Marcel Duchamp
1964 CE
Glazed earthenware
Brillo Soap Pads Box
Andy Warhol
1964 CE
Plywood and paint
Heinz Tomato Ketchup Box
Andy Warhol
1964 CE | Plywood and paint
Sold at Christie's auction house for $1.2 million...
Set of Four Boxes
Andy Warhol
1964 CE
Plywood and paint
One and Three Chairs
Joseph Kosuth | 1965 CE
Work No. 88
Martin Creed
1995 CE
Work No. 338
Martin Creed
2004 CE
Work No. 944
Martin Creed
2008 CE
The study of the visual aspects of culture, including art, design, media, and everyday objects, and how they shape and are shaped by social, political, and cultural contexts.
Also digs into how images, objects, and visuality communicate meaning and influence social dynamics.
Insofar as we live in a culture whose technological advances abet the production and dissemination of such images at a hitherto unimagined level, it is necessary to focus on how they work and what they do, rather than move past them too quickly to the ideas they represent or the reality they purport to depict.
-Martin Jay
In so doing, we necessarily have to ask questions about technological mediations and extensions of visual experience.
Semiotics
The study of signs and symbols, and how they communicate meaning through visual and cultural codes.
Representation
The way in which images, objects, or ideas are depicted or portrayed, often reflecting and reinforcing cultural values, ideologies, and power structures.
Gaze
The way in which the viewer's perspective is constructed and influenced by cultural, social, and power dynamics, such as the male gaze or colonial gaze.
Visual Rhetoric
The use of visual elements to persuade or influence an audience, often employed in advertising, propaganda, and political imagery.
Visual Literacy
The ability to interpret, analyze, and create visual messages.
Surveillance
Monitoring and regulation of individuals and populations through visual technologies and practices, which can reinforce racial and social hierarchies.
Visuality
The structures and power relations of looking, being seen, and vision in society.
Liberty Leading the People
Eugène Delacroix
1830 CE | Oil on canvas
The Barricade (Memory of Civil War)
Ernest Meissonier
1850 CE
Oil on canvas
Liberty Leading the People (Romanticism)
The Barricade (Realism)
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn
Ai Weiwei
1995 CE
Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds)
Ai Weiwei
2010 CE
Untitled
(I shop therefore I am)
Barbara Kruger
1987 CE
Untitled
Barbara Kruger
Date unknown (late 20th-century)
Untitled
Barbara Kruger
1987 CE
You're seeing less than half the picture
The Guerrilla Girls | 1989 CE
Do Women Have to be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum?
Guerrilla Girls
1989 CE
“To be naked is to be oneself.
To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.(The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.)
Nakedness reveals itself.
To be on display is to have the surface of one's own skin, the hairs of one's own body, turned into a disguise which, in that situation, can never be discarded.
The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.”
Nudity is placed on display.
To be naked is to be without disguise.
― John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972 CE
Sleeping Venus (a.k.a. The Dresden Venus)
Giorgione & Titian
c. 1510 CE | Oil on canvas
Venus of Urbino
Titian | 1538 CE | Oil on canvas
Examples of the "Venus Pudica" pose
Grande Odalisque
Ingres
1814 CE | Oil on canvas
Odalisque
Delcroix | 1825 CE | Oil on canvas
Odalisque
Delcroix
Grande Odalisque
Ingres
Olympia
Manet | c. 1863 CE | Oil on canvas
Olympia
Manet
Venus of Urbino
Titian
Portrait (Futago)
Yasumasa Morimura | 1988 CE | Photography
Sleeping Venus
Venus of Urbino
Portrait (Futago)
Olympia
Grande Odalisque
Odalisque
Impression-Sunrise
Claude Monet
1872 CE | Oil on canvas
La Moulin de la Galette
Auguste Renoir
1876 CE | Oil on canvas
Reading
Berthe Morisot
1873 CE | Oil on canvas
Bridge Over a Pool of Lilies
Claude Monet
1899 CE
Oil on canvas
The Sower
Vincent Van Gogh
1888 CE | Oil on canvas
The Night Café
Vincent Van Gogh
1888 CE | Oil on canvas
The Bathers
George Seurat
1883-1884 CE | Oil on canvas
The Bathers
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
(Rococco)
Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures
Angelica Kauffman
(Neoclassical)
Mont Sainte-Victoire
Paul Cézanne
1902-1904 CE | Oil on canvas
When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field, or whatever.
-Claude Monet, 1874 CE
Merely think, here is a little square of blue,
here an oblong of pink,
here a streak of yellow,
and paint it just as it looks to you,
the exact color and shape,
until it gives your own naïve impression of the scene before you.
The Large Bathers
Paul Cézanne
1906 CE | Oil on canvas
Composition VIII (The Cow)
Theo van Doesburg | 1917 CE | Oil on canvas
-Theo van Doesburg, Principles of Neo-Plastic Art, 1919 CE
The visual artist can leave the repetition of stories, fairy-tales, etc., to poets and writers.
The only way in which visual art can be developed and deployed is by revaluing and purifying the formative means.
Painterly means are:
colors, forms, lines and planes.
Grey Tree
Piet Mondrian
1911 CE | Oil on canvas
Tableau I
Piet Mondrian
1921 CE
Violin & Palette
Georges Braque
1908 CE
Oil on Canvas
Years of research had proved that closed form did not permit an expression sufficient for the two artists' aims. Closed form accepts objects as contained by their own surfaces, i.e., the skin; it then endeavors to represent this closed body, and, since no object is visible without light, to paint this 'skin' as the contact point between the body and light where both merge into color.
This chiaroscuro can provide only an illusion of the form of objects.
In the actual three dimensional world the object is there to be touched even after light is eliminated.
Thus the painters of the Renaissance, using the closed form method, endeavored to give the illusion of form by painting light as color on the surface of objects. It was never more than 'illusion.'
—Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, The Rise of Cubism, 1949
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Pablo Picasso
1907 CE
Oil on canvas
Gertrude Stein
Pablo Picasso
1906–1907 CE
Oil on canvas
Still Life with Chair-Caning
Pablo Picasso
1912 CE | Oil and oilcloth on canvas
Violon
Pablo Picasso
1911-1912 CE
Oil on canvas
The Persistence of Memory
Salvador Dalí
1931 CE | Oil on canvas
Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure)
Meret Oppenheim
1936 CE | Fur-covered cup
The Treachery (or Perfidy) of Images
René Magritte
1928–1929 CE | Oil on canvas
The Son of Man
René Magritte
1964 CE | Oil on canvas
Golconda
René Magritte
1953 CE | Oil on canvas
Magritte was fascinated by the seductiveness of images.
—Charly Herscovici, 2007 CE
Ordinarily, you see a picture of something and you believe in it, you are seduced by it; you take its honesty for granted.
But Magritte knew that representations of things can lie.
These images of men aren't men, just pictures of them, so they don't have to follow any rules.
This painting is fun, but it also makes us aware of the falsity of representation.
By Jonathan Morgan
ARTS 1301, Lone Star College, Prof. Morgan | Updated Fall 2024
Adjunct Professor of Art at Lone Star College, PhD candidate at IDSVA