Assignment 5: Between World Wars

1.Dada was the first conceptual art movement where the focus of the artists was not on crafting aesthetically pleasing objects but on making works that often upended bourgeois sensibilities and that generated difficult questions about society, the role of the artist, and the purpose of art. Dada was also known as Anti-art, yet art. it was purposely the opposite of all typical artistic standards. Dada arose as a reaction to World War I, artist started protesting and criticizing society for them the world didn't make sense so art became nonsense and they used cheap and common objects so that viewers were forced to see object in a different way. The work "Napoleon's Nose, Transformed into a Pregnant Woman, Strolling His Shadow with Melancholia amongst Original Ruins"  by Salvador Dalí, expresses  his own  metamorphosis, featuringthe most important symbols for dalí: the woman, the desert, the crutch and the crucifix, which are represented here in the shadows of the countryside, bathed in a critical paranoiac atmosphere. Irony lies in the fact that the title stresses the less apparent details of the work. In the deserted dream territory of Napoleon’s nose, its shadow and the pregnant woman are only small elements in a vast delirium.

2. Jacob Lawrence,was the first black artist to achieve prominence in what was still a largely segregated art world and society as a whole.  According to WSWS, Diverse influences contributed to the unique style of this young artist. Lawrence was influenced by international artistic trends and social struggles. Among those he looked the great Mexican muralists, especially Jose Clemente Orozco.Moreover, his association with major figures of the Harlem Renaissance, Lawrence studied as a teenager in the Harlem Art Workshop, funded by the newly-established federal Works Progress Administration. In 1936 he enrolled at the American Artists School, where he met artists who were political activists involved in the Scottsboro case, the frame-up of nine black youth in Alabama on rape charges. During this period Lawrence also met the painter Gwendolyn Knight, who was to become his wife and who survives him, after 59 years of marriage.  In the art work "The migrants arrived in great numbers"Lawrence took as his subject the exodus of African Americans from the rural South to Northern cities during and after World War I, when industry's demand for workers attracted them in vast numbers. As the son of migrants, Lawrence had a personal connection to the topic. He researched the subject extensively and wrote the narrative before making the paintings, taking seriously the dual roles of educator and artist.

Assignment #4: Impressionism and Post Impressionism.

Impressionism is a style of painting that began in France around 1870, characterized by the visual impression of the moment, especially in terms of the shifting effect of light and color. Impressionism uses spots of color to show the effects of different kinds of light, and  seeks to capture a feeling or experience rather than to achieve accurate depiction. Impressionism is often painted outdoors to capture sunlight and the color of the objects. Impressionist painting characteristics include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate representation of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience . One example of impressionism is " Boating on the Seine, c. 1879-80" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In Boating on the Seine, Renoir shows exemplary use of color, especially in the rich blue tones which are set off by its complementary orange hue to draw the viewer into the scene. In this example, the orange hue of the skiff against the blue of the river exploits the use of complementary colors. Since blue and orange are opposites on the color scale, they become more intense. The artist also shows the moment as it is, giving a sense of calm to the artwork. 

Post Impressionism was not a particular style of painting. It was the collective title given to the works of a few independent artists at the end of the 19th century. The Post Impressionists reacted against the limitations of Impressionism to explore color, line, and form, and the emotional response of the artist, a concern that led to the development of expressionism. The major artists associated with Post Impressionism were Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and Georges Seurat. Symbolic and highly personal meanings were particularly important to Post-Impressionists such as Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. Rejecting interest in depicting the observed world, they instead looked to their memories and emotions in order to connect with the viewer on a deeper level.  Vincent van Gogh used color and vibrant swirling brush strokes to convey his feelings and his state of mind. One example of post-impressionism is "Café Terrace at Night" by Vicent van Gogh.  Using contrasting colors and tones, Van Gogh achieved a luminous surface that pulses with an interior light, almost in defiance of the darkening sky.  Describing this painting in a letter to his sister he wrote, "Here you have a night painting without black, with nothing but beautiful blue and violet and green and in this surrounding the illuminated area colors itself sulfur pale yellow and citron green. It amuses me enormously to paint the night right on the spot..." Painted on the street at night, Van Gogh recreated the setting directly from his observations, a practice inherited from the Impressionists. However, unlike the Impressionists, he did not record the scene just as his eye observed it, but he expressed the image with a spiritual and psychological tone that echoed his individual and personal reaction. The brushstrokes vibrate with the sense of excitement and pleasure Van Gogh experienced while painting this work.

Assignment #3 Renaissance & Baroque

In the Renaissance, European painters had learned the importance of form and anatomy. It also represents human figures realistically. Indeed, Renaissance painters were so proud of their accurate portrayal of the human form that their figures almost always took the fore in their scenes. While the background might be detailed, it remained as that. Renaissance art have the  notion of "Humanism," a philosophy which had been the foundation for many of the achievements  of ancient Greece. Humanism downplayed religious and secular dogma and instead attached the greatest importance to the dignity and worth of the individual. In renaissance art we can find different characteristics, some of them are: realism and expression, perspective, emphasis on individualism and use of bright colors. A good example of northern renaissance is "A Goldsmith in his Shop" by Petrus Christus (Netherlandish, Baarle-Hertog (Baerle-Duc), active by 1444–died 1475/76 Bruges). A celebrated masterpiece of Northern Renaissance Art, this painting was signed and dated 1449 by Petrus Christus.  He became the leading painter after the death of Jan van Eyck. This painting is very detailed, especially  in the luminous jeweled, glass, and metallic objects. The main figure in this enigmatic painting was identified as Saint Eligius (the patron saint of goldsmiths). Like many Northern Renaissance paintings, Petrus Christus’ Goldsmith in his Shop reveals its complexities to the viewer over time. At first, one sees a group of three people inside a room. A male and a female dressed in expensive clothes. They appear to be a couple because the man has his hands around the woman's back. This woman gestures with her left hand towards the seated man. In his left hand, he holds a small balance which supports a gold ring. It seems like the couple is abut to make a purchase.It  has been suggested that the goldsmith  is Willem van Vleuten, a Bruges goldsmith who worked for Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. In 1449, the date of this painting, the duke commissioned from van Vlueten a gift for Mary of Guelders on the occasion of her marriage to James II, King of Scots. That couple may well be depicted in this painting, portrayed buying a wedding ring that is being weighed on a scale. The girdle that extends over the ledge of the shop into the viewer’s space is a further allusion to matrimony. The convex mirror, which links the pictorial space to the street outside, reflects two young men with a falcon (a symbol of pride and greed) and establishes a moral comparison between the imperfect world of the viewer and the world of virtue and balance depicted here.

                      Baroque painting can be seen as the beginning of realism in European art. If the Renaissance painters were obsessed with form and figure, Baroque painters were obsessed with light. It was not just the figures that needed to be realistic, but also their surroundings, as well and their place in the overall picture. Baroque painters supplemented Renaissance perfection of form and figure with consciousness of how light reacts to different materials, different surfaces and in different contexts. Baroque art is characterized by great drama, rich, deep color, and intense light and dark shadows. In contrast to Renaissance art, which usually showed the moment before an event took place, Baroque artists chose the most dramatic point, or the moment when the action was occurring. One good example of baroque art is "The Denial of Saint Peter"by Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (Italian, Milan or Caravaggio 1571–1610 Porto Ercole). This artwork  reflects the characteristics of baroque art, for example the excellent work with light and shadow makes it more dramatic and real. It was painted in the last months of Caravaggio’s tempestuous life and marks an extreme stage in his revolutionary style. Peter is shown before a fireplace, when a woman accuses him of being a follower of Christ. The pointing finger of the soldier and two fingers of the woman allude to the three accusations and to Peter’s three denials.  One more characteristic is that the viewer can feel how it represents the exact moment in which peter is  denying christ.