Art History Notes

We finish with Gauguin and then move on to the turn of the century. We be-gin in France and the important thing to remember is France is very important. We jumped from country to country (Innovation in Italy and now we are in innovation in France). We are now branching out in art. We need to also remember Syn-

thetism- a combination of two things (some-times real with biblical or non real)(Made by Gauguin). From post-impressionism, we move on to

symbolism

Gauguin, The Yellow Christ

He’s bringing together the meaning of local peasants and the man on the crucifixion is (in real life) is a sculpture but looks like a real man. He is representing himself rather than the sculpture that would normally be off to the side of the road.

Gauguin, the beautiful angel

He’s playing with composition and showing the freedom that the artist has. He travels to haiti and learns the language

Gauguin, raro te oviri

In his paintings he upgrades to how paintings there are.

Gauguin is no longer bound by the rules of western art

Gauguin, spirit of the dead watch-ing

He works this one out in western painting style. A wallpaper style is a reoccurring motif for Gauguin.

Gauguin, where do we come from? what are we?

This is his out-look on life.

This his narrative on life, beginning, middle, and the inevitable end.

Synthetism

Paul serusier, a breton sunday

That attitude of this painting is like wak-ing of from a dream and questioning why it is you dreamed about what you dreamed about.

The Nabis: painting as decoration (A group from that emphasizes being free from representation) (their paintings are like a patterned mask)Painting about painting. They are moving away from painting as representationTheir paintings are just a pure arrangement of things, no meaning.

Symbolism (NOT A STYLE, It’s an approach to painting)

1870s/80s-c.1900Symbolism in art comes from literature. They wanted to know the truth behind the truth.

Gustave Moreau, The Apparition

John the baptist is shown beheaded. She wishes for him to be dead but is afraid of the image.

Puvis de chavannes, young girls at the seashore

Girls normally talk to each other on the beach but here, the girls are self absorbed and turned away from each other. All three girls are the same model.

Symbolism is happening at the same time as a bit of impressionism, neo impressionism, post

impressionism, and way into 1907.

Chavannes keeps a neutral style while still in impressionism and so on. He is fo-cused on what not who or why.

Chavannes, christian inspiration

All about inspiration

Odilon redon, eyeball floating towards infin-ity

It’s a drawing that makes absolutely no sense

Bastien- lepage, jean of arc

We see the lady have an image of a dead man. It is not a real happening but is very realistic.

About silence and contemplation

Look at the series of “the glove”. It re-explains the fact that his style is non-logic

James Ensor

paints to make jokes and bring truth through it.

Ensor, christ’s entry into brussels

Christ is insignificant in this painting. He is way off in the

corner. Many political figures are here and meant to be funny.

Ensor, Skeletons fighting over a pickled herring

He is sticking it to the man and being funny

Edward Munch

Munch, the scream

It is the scream of nature. His sister of the time was in an insane asylum and this paint-ing helps to represent her being scared of na-ture and the outside world.

Munch did many depressing images and had dysfunctional relationships.

Post ImpressionismPaul Cezanne (artist)- Considered the bridge between 19th and 20th century painting.

Cezanne, self portrait

Titian’s Bacchanal is an example of works that Cezanne has looked back at and re-searched. He Copys old paintings and the old paintings are meant to look like the real think and meant to provoke emotion while Cezanne’s owes up to the fact that it’s just pigment on cloth. He’s not trying to build a fake composition like 16th cen-

tury painters did.

Cezanne moves on to still Lifes that become his favorite subject of paint-ing. He wasn’t a people person, so he could’t convince anyone to model for him. He wants to show the essence, for example, of an apple.

Cezanne, Dish of apples

He’s trying to broaden your deeper knowledge of everything. Think more than just looks (Smell, feel, taste, etc.) There’s shifting between representing

Cezanne, Mont sainte victoire and the viaduct of the arc river valley

He is switching up landscapes to represent what he sees

Cezanne, Basket of apples

Cezanne, still life with plaster cupid

He tries emphasising the twists in composition around the sculpture. He wants you to experience what is on a two dimensional surface. He broke the laws of foreshortening and 2d surface in order for the viewer to experience the paint-ing as well as distorting every-thing (Size, color, etc.)

Cezanne, the card players

He paints to show what he thinks of the people playing

Cezanne, Madame Cezanne in a yellow chair

He is an artist and knows that in order to show the composition in interest he must distort the background. The stripe in the back is slightly tilted

Cezanne, large bathers

He gets bolder with age and more geometri-cized

Cezanne dies later on before analytic cubism

Analytic Cubism1907/8-1912

The first stage is analytic cubism. The second stage is just before the world war

It was the painting of an object from multiple view-points which is what Cezanne already started doing. The two main artists for the first stage is:

Pablo Picasso

George Braque

Picasso, Demoiselles d’Avignon

Before cubism properly forms, Picasso goes ahead and makes this which took him a whole 16 sketch books of practice.People were horrified by the painting be-cause the history of western art had beau-tiful women, this was an attack on ideal-ism and de-sexualizes them. The masks indicated something monster like.

Picasso, three women

After studying limestone and his culture’s way of old art, he incorporates that into his work.

Braque, houses at l’estaque

He began cubism, not Picasso.

Braque, houses at l’estaque

He is no longer focusing on 3 dimension. He is focusing on the space around. His images flow and slip into another while Picasso em-phasizes the gaps.

It’s dialogue between the two

Picasso, female nude

Investigation of space. Color is not important

Picasso, violin and palette

Still investigating

Picasso, still life with chair….

This moves on from analytic cu-bism to synthetic cubism

They start collaging their work to create a fake muli-media work

It incorporates two views from top and bottom. Jou stands for a game and a newspaper… etc.

Synthetic cubism(Includes the image from picasso above)Braque and Picasso go on to incorporate words in their pieces and move on into the mind. It’s still about seeing from, multiple dimensions. Collaging begins during synthetic cubism. By collaging, they are cutting out and pasting, not all of it is painting. Painting has moved away to start constructing its own reality. From col-lages they move into collages with wood and such.The rest of the world at the time knew Braque and Picasso were up to something that had to do with revolutionizing painting and they were going crazy.

Expression, color and Harmony: Henri Ma-tisse and the Fauves

Henri Matisse

One of the biggest concern was to show people in landscape without it looking ridiculous and wrong

Matisse, Luxe

The colors don’t blend but the paint-ing is still beautiful.

Fauvism: The wild beasts

Matisse, open window

In the renaissance, their paintings were a win-dow view into the world.

Matisse, woman with a hat

He’s using deliberate disharmony. People obeyed the rules and not use green and red at the same time. He does the oposite to convey happiness.

Color builds his compositions in his paintings. One school: Matisse (Follows color rules) second school: Cezanne (follows structure of the painting and focusses on space)

Matisse, the blue nude

the blue creates an image within the image.

As time goes on, Matisse only focusses on the shapes and color.

Matisse, harmony in red

the wall and table cloth are the same color and pattern and the woman is like the shape of the trees. He wants to paint a red painting. Again, only

interested in color and shape.

Vlaminck, the woman from rat mort

There were two branches: color and space

Italian Futurism 1909-1914

“The new art is going to be the art of rebellion and construc-tion and industry.”- Marinetti

Luigi Russolo, the art of noise

They try saying that there’s music in the noise of industrialization

The idea of rebellion con-tinues to rise.

CARRA, the chase

Moving forward. The movement

Gino severini, armoured train

Geometric abstraction in Russia: SuprematismMalevich mounts an exhibition in a gallery in a way where a painting that has nothing in it is an icon thus saying painting is the thing to worship like a religious icon. There’s no representation and no subject anymore.