Unit 3:
Developing & Defining
‘Art’ as a Concept
ARTS 1301, Art Appreciation
Prof. Morgan
Gothic Art
Modern perceptions of "Gothic" art
The concept behind Medieval Gothic art:
Marvel not at the gold and at the expense but at the craftsmanship of the work. Bright is the noble work; but being nobly bright, the work should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights, to the True Light where Christ is the true door
-Abbot Suger, Liber de rebus in administratione sua gestis
About the term "Gothic"
Basilica of Saint-Denis
Saint-Denis, France
12th century CE
Saint-Denis as it appeared with reconstructed North
tower intact
Birth of Medieval Gothic Styling
Chartres Cathedral (West)
Chartres, France
1145-1155 CE
Tour of Chartres Cathedral
Rose Window, south façade, Chartres Cathedral
Chartres Cathedral, south façade
Main features of Gothic Cathedrals
Exterior wall of Chartres Cathedral
Exterior wall of Chartres Cathedral
Gothic pointed arch & ribbed vault
Interior of Chartres Cathedral
Physics of a Ribbed Vault
Interior of Chartres Cathedral
Royal Portal
Chartres Cathedral, Chartres, France
c. 1145-1155 CE
Detail of the decoration at the entrances
Tympanum of the Royal Portal
Gislebertus' Last Judgement, Romanesque Tympanum, 1130-1140 CE
Upper Center
Upper Left
Lower Left
Lower Right
Left, Base/Lintel
Center, Base/Lintel
Right, Base/Lintel
Columnar Statues, West Portal
Chartres Cathedral
1145-1150 CE
Carved Stone
Head of a Prophet (from St. Denis)
1137-1140 CE
Carved Stone
Head of a Prophet
from St. Denis
1137-1140 CE
Christ in Majesty
Saint-Sernin, Toulouse, France
c. 1096 CE
Adam
Pierre de Montreuil
c. 1260 CE
Carved Stone
Charles V and Joanna of Bourbon
mid-14th century CE
Carved Stone
Notre Dame de Paris
Paris, France
1163-1345 CE
Exterior View from the South
Tympanum from the Western Portal
Tympanum from the Western Portal (detail)
View of the height and ribbed vaulting
Interior view facing East
Notre-dame de Reims or Reims Cathedral
Reims, France
13th-14th century CE
Entrance to Reims Cathedral
The Grandeur of Gothic Cathedrals
Cologne Cathedral
Cologne, Germany
13th-14th century CE
Rear view of the cathedral
Interior (nave) of Cologne Cathedral
Aerial view of Cologne Cathedral
The Beauty of Cologne Cathedral
Detail of stonework on Cologne Cathedral spires
Interior of one of the spires
The European Renaissance
The Italian Peninsula during the Renaissance
David
Donatello
c. 1425-1430 CE
Bronze
Duomo di Santa Maria del Fiore (Dome)
Brunelleschi
Florence, 1420-36 CE
Structure of Brunelleschi's Dome
On Brunelleschi's Dome
Example of Linear Perspective (single-point)
Interior (looking east) of San Lorenzo
Filippo Brunelleschi
Florence, Italy, c. 1421–1469
Interior of Santo Spirito (looking northeast)
Filippo Brunelleschi
Florence, Italy, 1434–1436
Andrea Palladio
Villa Rotunda
Andrea Palladio
Vicenza, Italy, 1565 CE
Palladio's Novel Approach
Villa Rotonda floor plan & elevation
Villa Rotonda at a Distance
Queen's House
Indigo Jones
Greenwich, London, UK, 1616-1635 CE | Neo-Palladian style
The Palladian Style
Front (top) & Rear (below) views of the site
Site Plan for Queen's House
The Tribute Money
Masaccio
c. 1427 CE | Fresco
Medieval Italian Painting by Berlinghiero
Tempera vs Oil
Map of Frescoes in Brancacci Chapel
(Massacio's work indicated in red)
Interior view of Brancacci Chapel
Depostion
Rogier van der Weyden
c. 1435-1438 CE
Oil on Panel
Location of Flanders
The Flagellation of Christ
Pierro della Francesca | c. 1451 CE | Oil & Tempera on Panel
The Flagellation of Christ
Southern / Italian
Deposition
Northern / Flemish
The Birth of Venus
Botticelli
1448-1446 CE | Tempera on Canvas
David
Michelangelo
1501-1504 CE
Marble
Comparison of David by Donatello and Michelangelo
The Last Judgement
Michelangelo
1534 - 1541 CE
Fresco
Wide shot of the Sistine Chapel
(with Michelangelo's frescoes indicated)
A Note on Context
Beauty
Nicolas Poussin
Landscape with St. John on Patmos
1640 CE | Oil on canvas | Classicist Style
Peter Paul Rubens
The Disembarkation of Marie de' Medici
1600 CE | Oil on canvas
Baroque Style
Timeline of 18th-19th Century Art Movements & Related Events
Neoclassicism
Path of the Mt. Vesuvius Ash Cloud, 79 CE
Angelica Kauffman
Cornelia, Pointing to her Children as her Treasures
1785 CE | Oil on canvas
Jacques Louis David
The Death of Marat
1793 CE | Oil on canvas
Michelangelo
Pieta
1498-1499 CE
Marble
Romanticism
Francisco Goya
Saturn Devouring One of His Sons
1820-1822 CE
Oil mural transferred to canvas
The Industrial Revolution
Francisco Goya
Saturn Devouring One of His Sons
1820-1822 CE
Oil mural transferred to canvas
Eugène Delacroix
Liberty Leading the People
1830 CE | Oil on canvas
Théodore Géricault
The Raft of the Medusa
1819 CE | Oil on canvas
Caspar David Friedrich
Wanderer above a Sea of Mist
1817-1818 CE
Oil on canvas
Caspar David Friedrich
Monk by the Sea
1809-1810 CE | Oil on canvas
Edmund Burke & Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Whereas the beautiful is limited, the Sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the Sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.
Critique of Pure Reason, 1781
Edmund Burke
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure.
Philosophical Inquiry, 1757
Edmund Burke on the Sublime
Realism
Ernest Meissonier
The Barricade (Memory of Civil War)
1850 CE
Oil on canvas
Gustave Courbet
Burial at Ornans
1849 CE | Oil on canvas
Honoré Daumier
Rue Transnonain, April 15, 1934
1834 CE | Lithograph
Honoré Daumier
Fight between Schools
1855 CE | Lithograph on newsprint
Edouard Manet
Olympia
1863 CE | Oil on canvas
Modernism
& Art
An Overview of 'Modernism'
Impression-Sunrise
Claude Monet
1872 CE | Oil on canvas
Example of Monet's techniques
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
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Pablo Picasso
1907 CE
Oil on canvas
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
Dimensionality & Hypercubes
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
Exploring Surrealism
The Persistence of Memory
Salvador Dalí
1931 CE | Oil on canvas
An Interview with Dalí
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
Surrealism & Meaning
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.