Content Area: Later Europe and Americas, 1750–1980 C.E.
TIME PERIOD: 1848–1900
| Movement | Dates |
| Realism | 1848–1860s |
| Impressionism | 1872–1880s |
| Post-Impressionism | 1880s–1890s |
| Symbolism | 1890s |
| Art Nouveau | 1890s–1914 |
ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: The culture, beliefs, and physical settings of a region play an important role in the creation, subject matter, and siting of works of art.
Learning Objective: Discuss how the culture, beliefs, or physical setting can influence the making of a work of art. (For example: Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building)
Essential Knowledge:
■Europe and the Americas experience great innovation in economics, industrialization, war, and migration. There is a strong advancement in social issues.
■The avant-garde emerges as artists express themselves in various new movements.
■Marx and Darwin had philosophies that affected the world.
ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: Cultural interaction through war, trade, and travel can influence art and art making.
Learning Objective: Discuss how works of art are influenced by cultural interaction. (For example: Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going?)
Essential Knowledge:
■Architecture is expressed in a series of revival styles.
■Artists are exposed to diverse, sometimes exotic, cultures as a result of colonial expansion.
ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: Art and art making can be influenced by a variety of concerns including audience, function, and patron.
Learning Objective: Discuss how art can be influenced by audience, function, and/or patron. (For example: Rodin, The Burghers of Calais)
Essential Knowledge:
■Commercial galleries become important. Museums open and display art. Art sells to an ever-widening market.
■Artists work for private and public institutions to a sometimes-critical public.
■The importance of academies diminishes, and many artists work without patronage.
■Women artists become increasingly important.
ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: Art making is influenced by available materials and processes.
Learning Objective: Discuss how material, processes, and techniques influence the making of a work of art. (For example: Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building)
Essential Knowledge:
■Architecture is affected by new materials and new modes of construction.
■Artists use new media including photography, lithography, and mass production.
ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: Art history is best understood through an evolving tradition of theories and interpretations.
Learning Objective: Discuss how works of art have had an evolving interpretation based on visual analysis and interdisciplinary evidence. (For example: Munch, The Scream)
Essential Knowledge:
■Audiences and patrons were often hostile to art made in this period. Art history as a science continues to be shaped by theories, interpretations, and analyses applied to these new art forms.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The year 1848 was busy. Europe was shaken by revolutions in Sicily, Venice, Germany, Austria, and Lombardy—each challenging the old order and seeking to replace aristocracies with democracies. In France, Louis-Philippe, the great victor of the Revolution of 1830 and self-styled “Citizen King,” faced internal pressure and deposed himself. He was soon replaced by Napoleon III, who led France down a path of belligerency culminating in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. When the dust cleared, the Germans were masters of continental Europe, but by that time everyone had had enough of turmoil, and settled down for a generation of peace.
Social reformers were influenced by a concept called positivism promulgated by Auguste Comte (1798–1857). This theory allowed that all knowledge must come from proven ideas based on science or scientific theory. Comte said that only tested concepts can be accepted as truths. Key nineteenth-century thinkers like Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Karl Marx (1818–1883) added to the spirit of positivism by exploring theories about human evolution and social equality. These efforts shook traditional thinking and created a clamor in intellectual circles. New inventions such as telephones, motion pictures, bicycles, and automobiles shrank the world by opening communication to a wider audience.
Artists understood these powerful changes by exchanging traditional beliefs for the “avant-garde,” a word coined at this time. The academies, so carefully set up in the eighteenth century, were abandoned in the late nineteenth century. Artists used the past for inspiration, but rejected traditional subject matter. Gone are religious subjects, aristocratic portraits, history paintings, and scenes from the great myths of Greece and Rome. Instead the spirit of modernism prevailed, artists chose to represent peasant scenes, landscapes, and still lifes. Systematic and scientific archaeology began during this period as well, with excavations in Greece, Turkey, and Egypt.
Patronage and Artistic Life
Even though most artists wanted to exhibit at the Salon of Paris, many found the conservative nature of the jury to be stifling, and began to look elsewhere for recognition. Artists whose works were rejected by the Salon, such as Courbet or Manet, set up oppositional showcases, achieving fame by being antiestablishment. The Impressionist exhibitions of the 1870s and 1880s fall into this category.
One of the greatest changes in the marketing of art came about with the emergence of the art gallery. Here was a more comfortable viewing experience than the Salon: No great crowds, no idly curious—just the art lover with a dealer in tastefully appointed surroundings. Galleries featured carefully selected works of art from a limited number of artists, and were not the artistic impluvia that the Salon had become.
Paul Cézanne cultivated the persona of the struggling and misunderstood artist. He fought the conventional aspirations of his family, escaped to a bohemian lifestyle, and worked for years without success or recognition. The more he suffered, and the cruder he grew, the more people were attracted to him and found his artwork intriguing. He was one of the first to exploit the stereotype of the artist as rebel. Other artists followed suit: Gauguin escaped to Tahiti, van Gogh to the south of France.
European artists were greatly influenced by an influx of Japanese art, particularly their highly sophisticated prints of genre scenes or landscapes. These broke European conventional methods of representation, but were still sophisticated and elegant. Japanese art relies on a different sense of depth, enhancing a flatness that dominates the background. Subjects appear at odd angles or on a tilt. This interest in all things Japanese was called Japonisme.
Painters felt that the artificial atmosphere of the studio inhibited artistic expression. In a movement that characterizes Impressionism, called plein-air, artists moved their studio outdoors seeking to capture the effects of atmosphere and light on a given subject.
A new creative outlet for printmakers was the invention of lithography in 1798. Great Romantic artists such as Delacroix and Goya saw the medium’s potential and made effective prints. By the late nineteenth century, those politically inclined, such as Daumier, used the lithography to critique society’s ills. Others, like Toulouse-Lautrec, used the medium to mass-produce posters of the latest Parisian shows.
REALISM
Courbet’s aphorism “Show me an angel, and I’ll paint one” sums up the Realist philosophy. Inspired by the positivism movement, Realist painters believe in painting things that one could experience with the five senses, which often translated into painting the lower classes in their environment. Usually peasants are depicted with reverence, their daily lives touched with a basic honesty and sincerity thought to be missing among the middle and upper classes. They are shown at one with the earth and the landscape; brown and ochre are the dominant hues.
Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849, oil on canvas, formerly in Gemäldgalerie, Dresden, destroyed in 1945 (Figure 21.1)
Figure 21.1: Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849, oil on canvas, formerly in Gemäldgalerie, Dresden, destroyed in 1945
Content
■Peasants are breaking stones down to rubble to be used for paving.
■Poverty emphasized.
■The figures are born poor, will remain poor their whole lives.
■No idealization of peasant life or of the working poor.
Form
■Large massive figures dominate the composition; a style usually reserved for mythic figures in painting.
■Thick heavy paint application.
■Browns and ochres are dominant hues reflecting the drudgery of peasant life.
■Concentration on the main figures; little in the foreground or background to detract from them.
Function
■Submitted to the Salon of 1850–1851.
■Large size of painting usually reserved for grand historical paintings; this work elevates the commonplace into the realm of legend and history.
Context
■Reaction to labor unrest of 1848, which demanded better working conditions.
■Reflects a greater understanding of those who spend their entire lives in misery; cf. Dickens’s novels.
■Courbet’s words: “I stopped to consider two men breaking stones on the highway. It’s rare to meet the most complete expression of poverty, so an idea of a picture came to me on the spot. I made an appointment with them at my studio for the next day.… On the one side is an old man, seventy.… On the other side is a young fellow…in his filthy tattered shirt. Alas, in labor such as this, one’s life begins that way, and it ends the same way.”
Content Area Later Europe and Americas, Image 113
Web Source http://19thcenturyart-facos.com/artwork/stone-breakers
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Genre Scenes
–Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance (Figure 17.10)
–Bruegel, Hunters in the Snow (Figure 14.6)
–Cassatt, The Coiffure (Figure 21.7)
Honoré Daumier, Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art, 1862, lithograph, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York (Figure 21.2)
Figure 21.2: Honoré Daumier, Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art, 1862, lithograph, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
Content
■Nadar often took his balloon over Paris to photograph scenes from above.
■Daumier was a satiric artist who portrayed political and social events with a critical eye.
Function
■Originally appeared in a journal, Le Boulevard, as a mass-produced lithograph.
Context
■The print satirizes the claims that photography can be a “high art;” irony implied in title.
■Nadar was famous for taking aerial photos of Paris beginning in 1858.
■The work was executed after a court decision in 1862 that determined that photographs could be considered works of art; this is Daumier’s commentary.
■Presents Nadar as a silly photographer; in his excitement to get a daring shot he almost falls out of his balloon and loses his hat.
■Photography used as a military tool: Nadar’s balloon reused in the 1870 siege of Paris.
■Every building has the word “Photographie” on it; foreshadows modern surveillance photographs, drones with cameras, Google Earth.
Content Area Later Europe and Americas, Image 114
Web Source http://bir.brandeis.edu/handle/10192/3674
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Humor in Art
–Hogarth, The Tête à Tête (Figure 19.3)
–Fragonard, The Swing (Figure 19.1)
–Duchamp, Fountain (Figure 22.9)
Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris (Figure 21.3)
Figure 21.3: Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Form and Content
■Olympia’s frank, direct, uncaring, and unnerving look startled viewers.
■The figure is cold and uninviting; no mystery, no joy.
■No idealization of the female nude.
■The maid delivers flowers from an admirer; a cat responds to our entry into the room.
■Simplified modeling; active brushwork.
■Stark contrast of colors.
Reception
■Exhibited at the Salon of 1865; created a scandal.
Context
■Olympia was a common prostitute name of the time.
■A mistress was common to upper-class Parisian men, often sympathetically portrayed in contemporary literature, but never so brazenly depicted as in this painting.
■The painting is inspired by Titian’s Venus of Urbino (Figure 16.4) and seen as a modern commentary on the classical feminine nude.
■This painting is a reaction to academic art that was based on Renaissance and classical ideals.
■Images of prostitutes and black women are not new with this painting, but Manet creates a dialogue between the nude prostitute and the clothed black servant, named Laure, which brings up issues of sexuality, racism, and stereotypes.
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Web Source http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire_id/olympia-7087.html
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Female Form
–Ingres, La Grande Odalisque (Figure 20.3)
–Titian, Venus of Urbino (Figure 16.4)
–de Kooning, Woman, I (Figure 22.21)
Jose María Velasco, The Valley of Mexico from the Hillside of Santa Isabel (El Valle de México desde el Cerro de Santa Isabel), 1882, oil on canvas, National Art Museum, Mexico City (Figure 21.4)
Figure 21.4: Jose María Velasco, The Valley of Mexico from the Hillside of Santa Isabel (El Valle de México desde el Cerro de Santa Isabel), 1882, oil on canvas, National Art Museum, Mexico City
Form
■Dramatic perspective; small human figures.
■The painting depicts Tepeyac and offers a sweeping view of the Valley of Mexico, the basilica of the Lady of Guadalupe, as well as Mexico City and two volcanoes in the distance.
■The work glorifies the Mexican countryside as well as emerging industrialism with the depiction of the train.
■The artist as a keen observer of nature: rocks, foliage, clouds, waterfalls.
Context
■The artist was primarily an academic landscape painter.
■Velasco specialized in broad panoramas of the Valley of Mexico.
■He rejected the realist landscapes of Courbet; he preferred the romantic landscapes of Turner.
■The artist settled in Villa Guadalupe with an overview of the Valley of Mexico.
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Web Source https://www.wikiart.org/en/jose-maria-velasco
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Landscape and Nature
–Cole, The Oxbow (Figure 20.6)
–Korin, White and Red Plum Blossoms (Figures 25.4a, 25.4b)
–Su-nam, Summer Trees (Figure 29.6)
Eadweard Muybridge, The Horse in Motion, 1878, albumen print (Figure 21.5)
Figure 21.5: Eadweard Muybridge, The Horse in Motion, 1878, albumen print
Patronage
■Hired by Leland Stanford (the founder of Stanford University) to settle a bet to see if a horse’s four hooves could be off the ground at the same time during a natural gallop.
Technique
■The photographer used a device called a zoopraxiscope to settle the bet.
■Cameras snap photos at evenly spaced points along a track, giving the effect of things happening in sequence.
■For the time, it was very fast shutter speeds, nearly 1/2000th of a second.
■Photography now advanced enough that it can capture moments the human eye cannot.
■These motion studies bridge the gap between still photography and motion pictures.
Content
■One photograph with sixteen separate images of a horse galloping.
■Images could be played in sequence to simulate motion pictures.
Content Area Later Europe and Americas, Image 117
Web Source https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2013/05/22/eadweard-muybridge/
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Multiple Images
–Terra cotta warriors (Figures 24.8a, 24.8b)
–Warhol, Marilyn Diptych (Figure 22.23)
–Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates (Figures 29.3a, 29.3b)
IMPRESSIONISM
Impressionism is a true modernist movement symbolized by the avant-garde artists who spearheaded it. Relying on the transient, the quick and the fleeting, Impressionist brushstrokes seek to capture the dappling effects of light across a given surface. The knowledge that shadows contain color, that times of day and seasons of the year affect the appearance of objects—these are the basic tenets of Impressionism. Often working in plein-air, Impressionists use a spectacular color range, varying from subtle harmonies to stark contrasts of brilliant hues.
Impressionists concentrate on landscape and still-life painting, imbuing them with an urban viewpoint, even when depicting a country scene. Some make the human figure in movement a specialty, others, like Monet, eventually abandon figure painting altogether.
The influence of Japanese art cannot be underestimated. Artists like Cassatt were struck by the freedom that Japanese artists used to show figures from the back, or solid blocks of color without gradations of hues. Others signed their names in a Japanese anagram and imitated the flatness and off-center compositional qualities Japanese prints typically have.
Impressionism originally prided itself on being both antiacademic and antibourgeois; ironically, today it is the hallmark of bourgeois taste.
Claude Monet, The Saint-Lazare Station, 1877, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris (Figure 21.6)
Figure 21.6: Claude Monet, The Saint-Lazare Station¸ 1877, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Form
■Effects of steam, light, and color; not really about the machines or travelers.
■Subtle gradations of light on the surface.
■Forms dissolve and dematerialize; color overwhelms the forms.
■Figures are painted in a sketchy way with brief brushstrokes.
Content
■The painting depicts the interior of a train station in Paris; a modern marvel of engineering.
■Trains were propelled by steam; accent on the energy of the steam rather than the train that produces it.
History
■Exhibited at the Impressionist exhibition of 1877.
Context
■One of a series depicting this train station.
■Monet is famous for painting a series of paintings on the same subject at different times of day and days of the year.
■Originally meant to be hung together for effect: Haystacks were his first group to hang this way.
■Shows modern life in Paris with great industrial iron output.
■New view of a modern city that reflects Haussmann’s redesign of Paris.
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■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Oil Painting
–Pontormo, Entombment of Christ (Figure 16.5)
–Caravaggio, Calling of Saint Matthew (Figure 17.5)
–de Kooning, Woman, I (Figure 22.21)
Mary Cassatt, The Coiffure, 1890–1891, drypoint and aquatint, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Figure 21.7)
Figure 21.7: Mary Cassatt, The Coiffure, 1890–1891, drypoint and aquatint, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Form
■No posing or acting; the figures possess a natural charm.
■Cassatt’s work possesses a tenderness foreign to other Impressionists.
■The figures are from everyday life.
■Pastel color scheme.
■The work contains contrasting sensuous curves of the female figure with straight lines of the furniture and wall.
■Japanese influence:
–Decorative charm.
–Japanese hair style.
–Japanese point of view: figure seen from the back.
–Graceful lines of the neck.
Function
■Part of a series of ten prints exhibited together at a Paris gallery in 1891.
Technique
■Drypoint and aquatint.
■Drypoint yields soft dense lines.
■Aquatint is generally used with engravings like drypoint; it also yields flat colored areas on a print.
Context
■Cassatt’s world is filled with women; women as independent and not needing men to complete themselves; women who enjoy the company of other women.
■The mother and child theme is a specialty of Cassatt.
■She is among the first Impressionist artists seen in the United States of America.
■She acted as an advisor to wealthy American collectors as to what Impressionist works to buy.
Content Area Later Europe and Americas, Image 121
Web Source https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/371957
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Domestic Scenes
–Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance (Figure 17.10)
–Velázquez, Las Meninas (Figure 17.7)
–Grave stele of Hegeso (Figure 4.7)
POST-IMPRESSIONISM
While the Impressionists stressed light, shading, and color, the Post-Impressionists—that is, those painters of the next generation—moved beyond these ideals to combine them with an analysis of the structure of a given subject. Paul Cézanne, the quintessential Post-Impressionist, said that he wished to “make Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the museums.” It is common for Post-Impressionists to move toward abstraction in their work, and yet seemingly paradoxically retaining solid forms, exploring underlying structure, and preserving traditional elements such as perspective.
Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889, oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York (Figure 21.8)
Figure 21.8: Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889, oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Form
■Thick, short brushstrokes.
■Heavy application of paint called impasto.
■Parts of the canvas can be seen through the brushwork; artist need not fill in every part of the surface.
■Strong left-to-right wave-like impulse in the work broken only by the tree and the church steeple.
■The tree looks like green flames reaching into a sky that is exploding with stars over a placid village.
Context
■The mountains in the distance are the ones that Van Gogh could see from his hospital room in Saint-Rémy; steepness exaggerated.
■Combination of images: Dutch church, crescent moon, Mediterranean cypress tree.
■Cypresses were often associated with cemeteries.
■Landscape painting was popular in the late nineteenth century as a reaction to the industrialization of cities.
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Web Source https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/vincent-van-gogh-the-starry-night-1889
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Landscape
–Kngwarreye, Earth’s Creation (Figure 29.13)
–Fan Kuan, Travelers among Mountains and Streams (Figure 24.5)
–Cole, The Oxbow (Figure 20.6)
Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, 1897–1898, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Figure 21.9)
Figure 21.9: Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, 1897–1898, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Content
■The story of life, read right to left.
■Right: birth, infant, and three adults—the beginning of life.
■Center: mid life; picking of the fruit of the world.
■Left: death (a figure derived from a Peruvian mummy exhibited in Paris, cf. The Scream Figure 21.11); the old woman seems resigned.
■The blue idol with arms half-raised represents “The Beyond.”
■The figures in foreground represent Tahiti and an Eden-like paradise; background figures are anguished, darkened figures.
Context
■Title of the painting poses more questions than it answers.
■Gauguin thought the painting was a summation of his artistic and personal expression.
■Painted during his second stay in Tahiti between 1895–1901.
■Gauguin suffered from poor health and poverty, obsessed by thoughts of death.
■He learned of the death of his daughter, Aline, in April 1897 and was deeply shaken; he was determined to commit suicide and have this painting be his artistic last will and testament.
Influences
■Many nontraditional influences:
–Egyptian figures used for inspiration.
–Japanese prints in the solid fields of color and unusual angles.
–Tahitian imagery in the Polynesian idol.
■A rejection of Greco-Roman influence.
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Web Source http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/where-do-we-come-from-what-are-we-where-are-we-going-32558
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: European Encounters with the World
–Frontispiece of the Codex Mendoza (Figure 18.1)
–Bandolier bag (Figure 26.11)
–Rodriguez, Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo (Figure 18.5)
Paul Cézanne, Mont Saint-Victoire (Figure 21.10), 1902–1904, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
Figure 21.10: Paul Cézanne, Mont Saint-Victoire, 1902–1904, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
Form
■Used perspective through juxtaposing forward warm colors with receding cool colors.
■Cézanne had contempt for flat painting; wanted rounded and firm objects, but ones that were geometric constructions made from splashes of undiluted color.
■Not a momentary glimpse of atmosphere, as in the Impressionists, but a solid and firmly constructed mountain and foreground.
■The landscape is seen from an elevation.
■Cézanne’s landscapes rarely contain humans.
■Three horizontal sections divide the painting, connected by a complex series of diagonals that bring your eye back.
■The viewer is invited to look at space, but not enter.
■Cézanne allows blank parts of the canvas to shine through.
■Broad brushstrokes dominate the painted surface.
Context
■One of 11 canvases of this view painted near his studio in Aix in the south of France; the series dominates Cézanne’s mature period.
■Not the countryside of Impressionism; more interested in geometric forms rather than dappled effects of light.
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Web Source http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/102997.html
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Interpretations of the Natural World
–Su-nam, Summer Trees (Figure 29.6)
–Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa, also known as the Great Wave (Figure 25.5)
–Silver and gold maize cobs, Inka (Figure 26.7)
SYMBOLISM
As a reaction against the literal world of Realism, Symbolist artists felt that the unseen forces of life, the things that are deeply felt rather than merely seen, were the guiding influences in painting. Symbolists embraced a mystical philosophy in which the dreams and inner experiences of an artist’s life became the source of inspiration. Hence, Symbolists vary greatly in their painting styles from the very flat primitive quality of a work by Rousseau to the expressionistic swirls of Munch’s art.
Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893, tempera and pastels on cardboard, National Gallery, Oslo (Figure 21.11)
Figure 21.11: Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893, tempera and pastels on cardboard, National Gallery, Oslo
Form and Content
■The figure walks along a wharf; boats are at sea in the distance.
■Long, thick brushstrokes swirl around the composition.
■The figure cries out in a horrifying scream; the landscape echoes his emotions.
■Discordant colors symbolize anguish.
■Emaciated, twisting stick figure with skull-like head.
Function
■Painted as part of a series called The Frieze of Life; a semi autobiographical succession of paintings.
Context
■Said to have been inspired by an exhibit of a Peruvian mummy in Paris.
■The work prefigures Expressionist art.
■The work is influenced by Art Nouveau swirling patterns.
Content Area Later Europe and Americas, Image 122
Web Source http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rbmrx
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Individual and Society
–Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan (Figure 24.7)
–Neshat, Rebellious Silence (Figure 29.14)
–Salcedo, Shibboleth (Figure 29.26)
ART NOUVEAU
Art Nouveau developed in a few artistic centers in Europe—Brussels, Barcelona, Paris, and Vienna—and lasted from about 1890 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Art Nouveau seeks to eliminate the separation among various artistic media and combine them into one unified experience. Thus, an Art Nouveau building was designed, furnished, and decorated by the same artist or artistic team as an integrated whole.
Stylistically, Art Nouveau relies on vegetal and floral patterns, complexity of design, and undulating surfaces. Straight lines are avoided; the accent is on the curvilinear. Designers particularly enjoy using elaborately conceived wrought ironwork for balconies, fences, railings, and structural elements.
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss, 1907–1908, oil and gold leaf on canvas, Austrian Gallery, Vienna (Figure 21.12)
Figure 21.12: Gustav Klimt, The Kiss, 1907–1908, oil and gold leaf on canvas, Austrian Gallery, Vienna
Form
■Little of the human form is actually seen: two heads four hands, two feet.
■The bodies are suggested under a sea of richly designed patterning.
■The work is spaced in an indeterminate location against a flattened background.
Context
■The male figure is composed of large rectangular boxes; the female figure is composed of circular forms.
■The work suggests all-consuming love; passion; eroticism.
■The use of gold leaf is reminiscent of Byzantine mosaics (Figure 8.5).
■The work is influenced by gold applied to medieval illuminated manuscripts (Figure 12.9b).
■Part of a movement called the Vienna Succession, which broke away from academic training in schools at that time.
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Web Source https://blog.artsper.com/en/a-closer-look/art-analysis-the-kiss-by-klimt/
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Couples
–Akhenaton, Nefertiti, and three daughters (Figure 3.10)
–Sarcophagus of the Spouses (Figure 5.4)
–Van Eyck, Arnolfini Portrait (Figure 14.2)
LATE-NINETEENTH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE
The movement toward skeletal architecture increased in the late nineteenth century. Architects and engineers worked in the direction of a curtain wall, that is, a building that is held up by an interior framework, called a skeleton, the exterior wall being a mere curtain made of glass or steel that keeps out the weather.
The emphasis is on the vertical. Land values soar in modern cities, and architects respond by building up. Buildings emphasized their verticality by using tall pilasters and setting back windows behind them. Architects insisted their buildings were works of art, and covered them in traditional terra cotta or ironwork.
During this period, the greatest advances in architecture were made by the Chicago School, formed shortly after the Great Fire burned much of the city to the ground in 1871. This disaster exposed not only the faults of building downtown structures out of wood, but also demonstrated the weaknesses of iron, which melts and bends under high temperatures. What survived quite nicely is building ceramic, especially when steel or iron is wrapped in terra cotta casings. This became the mainstay of Chicago buildings built in the late nineteenth century, such as Carson, Pririe, Scott and Company (Figure 21.14). These buildings demanded open and wide window spaces for light and air, as well as allowing passersby to admire window displays. Thus, the Chicago window was developed with a central immobile windowpane flanked by two smaller double-hung windows that opened for ventilation (Figure 21.13).
Figure 21.13: Chicago windows on Daniel Burnham’s Reliance Building, 1890–1894, Chicago
The single most important development in the history of early modern architecture is the invention of the elevator by Elisha Otis. This made buildings of indefinite height a reality.
Louis Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building, 1899–1903, iron, steel, glass, and terra cotta, Chicago (Figures 21.14a, 21.14b, and 21.14c)
Figure 21.14a: Louis Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building, 1899–1903, iron, steel, glass, and terra cotta, Chicago
Figure 21.14b: Louis Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building, detail of main entrance
Figure 21.14c: Louis Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building, plan
Form
■Horizontal emphasis on the exterior mirrors the continuous flow of floor space on the interior.
■The exterior is covered in decorative terra cotta tiles; original interior ornamentation elaborately arranged around lobby areas, hallways, elevator; interior ornamentation now lost.
■The architect designed maximum window areas to admit light, but also to make displays visible from the street.
■Nonsupportive role of exterior walls; held up by an interior framework.
■Open ground plan allows for free movement of customers and goods.
Function
■A department store on a fashionable street in Chicago.
Context
■Some historical touches exist in the round entrance arches and the heavy cornice at the top of the building.
■Cast iron decorative elements transformed the store into a beautiful place to buy beautiful things.
■Shows the influence of Art Nouveau in decorative ironwork on the entrance.
■Sullivan motto: “Form follows function.”
Content Area Later Europe and Americas, Image 124
Web Source https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/chicago/c9.htm
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: City Planning
–Gehry, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Figures 29.1a, 29.1b)
–Trajan Markets (Figure 6.10c)
–Mies van der Rohe and Johnson, Seagram Building (Figure 22.18)
LATE-NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCULPTURE
Late-nineteenth-century sculpture, symbolized by Rodin, visibly represented the imprint of the artist’s hand on a given work. Most works were hand molded first in clay, and then later cast in bronze or cut in marble, usually by a workshop. The sculptor then put finishing touches on a work he or she conceived, but never executed. The physical imprint of the hand is analogous to the visible brushstroke in Impressionist painting.
Auguste Rodin, The Burghers of Calais, 1884–1895, bronze, Calais, France (Figure 21.15)
Figure 21.15: Auguste Rodin, The Burghers of Calais, 1884–1895, bronze, Calais, France
Function and Reception
■Commissioned by the town of Calais in 1885 to commemorate six burghers who offered their lives to the English king in return for saving their besieged city during the Hundred Years’ War in 1347.
■Town council of Calais said it was inglorious; they wanted a single allegorical figure.
■In 1895, more than 10 years after Rodin presented the first maquette, it was installed at the entrance of the Jardin du Front Sud, on a pedestal designed by the city architect Decroix, with an octagonal iron gate around it.
■Rodin resented this installation and wanted the work mounted on a very low, “but impressive,” base on the Place d’Armes in the center of Calais.
■Meant to be placed on the ground so that people could see it close up.
Context
■Rodin’s direct literary source is Jean Froissart (ca. 1333–1410) who described how King Edward of England demanded the six citizens to appear before him bareheaded, only dressed with a sackcloth, with a rope around their necks and the keys to the town in their hands. He wanted them to sacrifice their lives for their town.
■The English king was impressed by the self-sacrifice and allowed the citizens to live.
■Parallels between Paris besieged during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and Calais besieged by the English in 1347.
Form
■Figures sculpted individually and then arranged as the artist thought best.
■Rodin concentrates on the figures’ misery, doubt, and internal conflict.
■Each has a different emotion: some fearful, or resigned, or forlorn.
■Figures suffer from privation; they are weak and emaciated.
■The men are placed on an equal level, symbolizing their uniform sacrifice.
■The central figure is Eustache de Saint-Pierre, who has large, swollen hands and a noose around his neck, ready for his execution.
■Details are reduced to emphasize an overall impression.
Content Area Later Europe and Americas, Image 119
Web Source http://www.rodin-web.org/works/1884_burghers.htm
■Cross-Cultural Comparisons for Essay Question 1: Public Sculpture
–Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates (Figures 29.3a, 29.3b)
–Kneeling statue of Hatshepsut (Figure 3.9b)
–Bamiyan Buddha (Figures 23.2a and 23.2b)
VOCABULARY
Aquatint: a kind of print that achieves a watercolor effect by using acids that dissolve onto a copper plate (Figure 21.7)
Avant-garde: an innovative group of artists who generally reject traditional approaches in favor of a more experimental technique
Caricature: a drawing that uses distortion or exaggeration of someone’s physical features or apparel in order to make that person look foolish (Figure 21.2)
Drypoint: an engraving technique in which a steel needle is used to incise lines in a metal plate. The rough burr at the sides of the incised lines yields a velvety black tone in the print (Figure 21.7)
Japonisme: an attraction for Japanese art and artifacts that were imported into Europe in the late nineteenth century
Lithography: a printmaking technique that uses a flat stone surface as a base. The artist draws an image with a special crayon that attracts ink. Paper, which absorbs the ink, is applied to the surface and a print emerges
Modernism: a movement begun in the late nineteenth century in which artists embraced the current at the expense of the traditional in both subject matter and in media. Modernist artists often seek to question the very nature of art itself
Plein-air: painting in the outdoors to directly capture the effects of light and atmosphere on a given object (Figure 21.6)
Positivism: a theory that expresses that all knowledge must come from proven ideas based on science or scientific theory; a philosophy promoted by French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857)
Skeleton: the supporting interior framework of a building
Zoopraxiscope: a device that projects sequences of photographs to give the illusion of movement (Figure 21.5)
SUMMARY
The late nineteenth century is known for a series of art movements, one following quickly upon another: Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and Art Nouveau. Each movement expresses a different philosophy demonstrating the richness and diversity of artistic expression in this period.
Realism relied on the philosophy of positivism, which made paintings of mythological and religious scenes seem not only outdated but archaic. Many Impressionist artists painted outdoors, seeking to draw inspiration from nature. Post-Impressionists explored the underlying structural foundation of images, and laid the groundwork for much of modern art. Symbolists drew upon personal visions to create works resembling a dreamworld. Lastly, Art Nouveau was a stylish and creative art form that put emphasis on sinuous shapes and curvilinear forms.
The late nineteenth century saw a revival of sculpture under the command of Auguste Rodin, who molded works in clay giving them a very tactile quality.
The direction of late-nineteenth-century architecture was vertical. Architects responded to increased land values and advances in engineering by designing taller and thinner. For the first time in history, cities began to be defined by their skylines, which rose dramatically in downtown areas.
PRACTICE EXERCISES
Multiple-Choice
1.Late-nineteenth-century avant-garde European painting had a fascination for
(A)trains, canals, and other forms of modern transportation
(B)Chinese jades and bronzes
(C)imported African masks
(D)historical and religious subjects done on commission
2.Painters achieved fame in the mid-nineteenth century by having their works
(A)realize success at the Salons of Paris
(B)photographed for posterity
(C)enter royal collections
(D)shipped to eager buyers in non-Western countries
3.Manet’s Olympia horrified contemporary critics as well as the public because
(A)the central figure was a prostitute, which was new in art history
(B)the inclusion of a black woman was bold and experimental
(C)it relied on the Renaissance view of formal composition, and that was deemed outdated
(D)it depicted the main figure as shameless and defiant in her role
4.Eadweard Muybridge’s experiments enabled him to
(A)draw onto a negative to create special effects
(B)freeze the action of a fast-moving object
(C)introduce color for the first time in a world of black-and-white photography
(D)make multiple copies from a single negative
5.Post-Impressionist artists differed from the Impressionists a generation earlier by rejecting the Impressionist use of
(A)everyday people and situations in their work
(B)paintings in a series
(C)the transitory effect of changing atmospheric conditions
(D)solid massing of forms
Short Essay
Practice Question 5: Attribution
Suggested Time: 15 minutes
Attribute this painting to the artist who painted it.
Using at least two specific details, justify your attribution by describing relevant similarities between this work and a work in the required course content.
Using at least two specific details, explain why these visual elements are characteristic of this artist.
ANSWER KEY
1.A
2.A
3.D
4.B
5.C
ANSWERS EXPLAINED
Multiple-Choice
1.(A) Historical and religious paintings were out of fashion; trains, canals and other forms of transportation were in. The interest in African and Chinese art happens in the twentieth century.
2.(A) Without success at the Paris salon, an artist’s career could not go anywhere.
3.(D) Both prostitutes and black women have appeared in art history before, so there was nothing shocking about this. This painting uses a Renaissance notion of composition in that it references Titian’s Venus of Urbino. What is new is the representation of the prostitute in a bold and confrontational manner rather than as a secretive and demure individual.
4.(B) A zoopraxiscope freezes the motion of a fast-moving person, animal, or object, and presents images in a sequence.
5.(C) Post-Impressionists wanted to return to a solid form of representation; therefore, they rejected Impressionists’ interest in the transitory and the fleeting.
Short Essay Rubric
Task |
Point Value |
Key Points in a Good Response |
Attribute the painting to the artist who painted it. |
1 |
Mary Cassatt |
Using at least two specific details, justify your attribution by describing relevant similarities between this work and a work in the required course content. |
2 |
The work in the required course content is Mary Cassatt, The Coiffure, 1890–1891, drypoint and aquatint. Two specific details could include: ■Tenderness foreign to other Impressionists. ■Pastel color scheme. ■No posing or acting; figures possess a natural charm. ■Unusual point of view. |
Using at least two specific details, explain why these visual elements are characteristic of this artist. |
2 |
Answers could include Mary Cassatt’s interest in: ■A world filled with women: women as independent and not needing men to complete their lives; women who enjoy the company of other women. ■Japonisme: decorative charm; coiffure of the woman; point of view seen from the back or from above; simple decorative color patterns; Japanese-style furniture in the room. |