Lesson 2, unit 2 formal analysis

Editor's Notes

• #3: This portrait is the masterpiece of Gainsborough's early years. It was painted after his return home from London to Suffolk in 1748, soon after the marriage of Robert Andrews of the Auberies and Frances Carter of Ballingdon House, near Sudbury, in November of that year.  The landscape evokes Robert Andrews's estate, to which his marriage added property. He has a gun under his arm, while his wife sits on an elaborate Rococo-style wooden bench. The painting of Mrs Andrews's lap is unfinished. The space may have been reserved for a child for Mrs Andrews to hold. The painting follows the fashionable convention of the conversation piece, a (usually) small-scale portrait showing two or more people, often out of doors. The emphasis on the landscape here allows Gainsborough to display his skills as a painter of convincingly changing weather and naturalistic scenery, still a novelty at this time. http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/thomas-gainsborough-mr-and-mrs-andrews This well-formed statuette of a hippopotamus demonstrates the Egyptian artist's appreciation for the natural world. It was molded in faience, a ceramic material made of ground quartz. Beneath the blue-green glaze, the body was painted with the outlines of river plants, symbolizing the marshes in which the animal lived. The seemingly begin appearance that this figurine presents is deceptive. To the ancient Egyptians, the hippopotamus was one of the most dangerous animals in their world. The huge creatures were a hazard for small fishing boats and other river-craft. The beast might also be encountered on the waterways in the journey to the afterlife. As such, the hippopotamus was a force of nature that needed to be propitiated and controlled, both in this life and the next. This example was one of a pair found in a shaft associated with the tomb chapel of the steward Senbi II at Meir, a site about thirty miles south of modern Asyut. Three of its legs, originally broken to prevent the creature from harming the deceased, have been restored. The hippo was part of Senbi's burial equipment, which included a canopic box (also in the Museum), a coffin, and numerous models of boats and food production. Source: Statuette of a Hippopotamus [Egyptian; Middle Egypt, Meir] (17.9.1) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• #6: City of Berne( Germany) red bridge Expressionist initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality. Paul Klee  is ranked as one of the most original masters of contemporary art. He was born in Bern, Switzerland and lived for many years in Germany. He was one of the instructors at the Bauhaus . In 1931 he began teaching at Dusseldorf Academy, but he was dismissed by the Nazis, who termed his work "degenerate."In 1933,  Klee  went back to his native Switzerland. He died on June 29, 1940. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually mastered color theory, and wrote extensively about it; his lectures  Writings on Form and Design Theory
• #11: From Southern California, Martha Alf grew up in San Diego and became known for her cylinder painting of everyday household items transformed into mysterious objects for which the viewer often has reverence. Many of her subjects are based on photographs.  Her style is akin to that of Josef Albers, whose paintings are studies in optics. She was also influenced by her intrigue with precise still life painting of 16th-century Spain and also her admiration for Georgia O'Keeffe. She raised her family as a traditional housewife and then went to the University of California at Los Angeles where she studied with well-known figurative painter Richard Diebenkorn.
• #16: Pat Steir’s complex paintings, prints, and drawings, encompass a lexicon of marks and signs. Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1940, Steir developed an interest in art at a young age. She began her formal art training in 1956, studying graphic arts at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where she eventually received her B.F.A. in 1962.   Steir pursued her art while also working as a freelance book cover designer and as an art director at the New York publishing house, Harper & Row. In 1964, she had her first solo exhibition at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York, and continued to show sporadically throughout the decade. Her work of the late 1960s was more figural, using male nudes juxtaposed with animal heads. Produced during a time when minimalism and conceptual art was the norm, these dramatic works demonstrate Steir’s single-minded pursuit of her own style. Steir rejected traditional forms of composition in favor of seemingly unrelated shapes and forms. She composed her works in combinations of random brushstrokes, grid lines, color charts, signs, color fields and pictorial elements to create canvases that display a self-conscious symbolism. Drips of paint in the works can refer to the actual process of painting. Within her works there is no fixed meaning, as the artist allows her viewers to draw their own inferences based on their personal history and associations. In process, Steir starts with a mark that is developed into a unit of signs and symbols.
• #17: His best-known, most popular works were produced during this time at Argenteuil, where he often painted alongside Renoir, Sisley, Caillebotte, and Manet. Monet regularly exhibited his paintings in the private Impressionist group shows, which first took place in 1874. During that first show his painting Impression: Sunrise (1872) inspired a hostile newspaper critic to call all the artists "Impressionists," a name that persists to characterize the artistic movement today. Claude Monet's paintings from the 1870s, notably Red Boats at Argenteuil (1875), are fine examples of the new Impressionist style. The paintings are essentially illusionist, but ring with a chromatic vibrancy. Monet worked directly from nature and revealed that even on the darkest, gloomiest day, an infinite variety of colors exist. To capture the fleeting lights and hues, Monet had to employ a new painting technique using short brushstrokes filled with individual color. The result was a canvas alive with painterly activity, the opposite of the smooth blended surfaces of the past. While traditional landscape artists painted what they saw in their mind, Claude Monet, sought to paint the world exactly how he saw it, not how he knew it should look. So rather than painting a myriad of separate leaves, he depicted splashes of constantly changing light and color. It’s important to note that in this aspect, Monet belongs to the tradition of Renaissance illusionism. In depicting the natural world, he based his art on perceptual rather than conceptual knowledge. Impressionism is a style of painting that uses fluid and abstract strokes to create compositions filled with mood and emotion. The formal movement was started in the mid-1800s by a group of French painters revolting against the accepted academic standards of high art. The movement grew so strong that when several Impressionist paintings were refused entry into the national art gallery, the emperor Napoleon created a second national art salon to exhibit the rejected works. The Impressionism movement was named after the painting Impression: Soleil Levant by Claude Monet. The abstract and brightly colored piece invokes the deep colors and overwhelming light of a sunrise, making it a perfect example of the Impressionism movement. However, many helped create the revolution, including Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. Famous Impressionist Painters Claude Monet (1840-1926) is one of the most famous of all the Impressionist painters. His abstract and emotional representations of nature focused on lighting and shadows. His best known works include one series of paintings portraying haystacks at different times of day and another series invoking the beauty and calm of waterlilies in his garden. Berthe Morisot  (1841-1895) was one of the few female Impressionist painters during her life, and her work did not gain critical acclaim until long after her death. Morisot was the friend and sister-in-law of the famous painter Edouard Manet. Her work focused on portraits of daily life, usually with women as the main subject. Her famous painting, The Artist's Sister at a Window  is a typical example of her tendency toward female subjects and the strong use of white. Camille Pissarro  (1830-1903) focused most of his work on landscapes that captured moments of daily life and never strayed from the basic Impressionist ideals. He used both rural and urban settings for his paintings, displaying the movement of people among architectural and natural elements. One of his most famous pieces, Haymakers Resting , is filled with the dreamy gold hues of a hayfield as three sturdy women rest in the shade. Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) focused on beauty and joy in his paintings. His works tend to have happy moods that often include children, nature or attractive women. He had a gift for capturing large and complex compositions filled with crowds of people and intricate details, which was rare for an Impressionist painter. However, he could also capture intimate images, such as the casual conversation between two women in his painting Young Women Talking . Alfred Sisley  (1839-1899) was one of the least successful Impressionist painters during his life. It wasn't until after his death that his work began to sell and collect praise. Sisley focused on landscape works and was particularly interested in re-creating different skies. One of his most famous piece, Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne , is a perfect example of his attention to the environmental effects, such as sun, rain and snow, on architectural and natural settings.
• #19: Roger Fry coined the term post impressionist in 1910 , acknowledged that the artists did not share a unified style or approach to art, but they all used impressionism as a springboard for their individual expressions of modern art.
• #21: A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore a risky and unfeeling act to send it out into the world. How often it must be permanently impaired by the eyes of the vulgar and the cruelty of the impotent who would extend the affliction universally! Again, Rothko’s aims, in some critics’ and viewers’ estimation, exceeded his methods. Many of the abstract expressionists exhibited pretensions for something approximating a spiritual experience, or at least an experience that exceeded the boundaries of the purely aesthetic. In later years, Rothko emphasized the spiritual aspect of his artwork, a sentiment that would culminate in the construction of the Rothko Chapel. Many of the "multiforms" and early signature paintings display an affinity for bright, vibrant colors, particularly reds and yellows, expressing energy and ecstasy. By the mid 1950’s however, close to a decade after the completion of the first "multiforms," Rothko began to employ dark blues and greens; for many critics of his work this shift in colors was representative of a growing darkness within Rothko’s personal life. The general method for these paintings was to apply a thin layer of binder mixed with pigment directly onto uncoated and untreated canvas, and to paint significantly thinned oils directly onto this layer, creating a dense mixture of overlapping colors and shapes. His brush strokes were fast and light, a method he would continue to use until his death. His increasing adeptness at this method is apparent in the paintings completed for the Chapel. With a total lack of figurative representation, what drama there is to be found in a late Rothko is in the contrast of colors, radiating, as it were, against one another. His paintings can then be likened to a sort of fugal arrangement: each variation counterpoised against one another, yet all existing within one architectonic structure. In the spring of 1968, Rothko was diagnosed with a mild aortic aneurysm (defect in the arterial wall, that gradually leads to outpouching of the vessel and at times frank rupture). Ignoring doctor’s orders, Rothko continued to drink and smoke heavily, avoided exercise, and maintained an unhealthy diet. However, he did follow the medical advice given not to paint pictures larger than a yard in height, and turned his attention to smaller, less physically strenuous formats, including acrylics on paper. Meanwhile, Rothko's marriage had become increasingly troubled, and his poor health and impotence resulting from the aneurysm compounded his feeling of estrangement in the relationship. Rothko and his wife Mell separated on New Year’s Day 1969, and he moved into his studio. On February 25, 1970, Oliver Steindecker, Rothko’s assistant, found the artist in his kitchen, lying dead on the floor in front of the sink, covered in blood. He had sliced his arms with a razor found lying at his side. During autopsy it was discovered he had also overdosed on anti-depressants. He was 66 years old. The Seagram Murals on display at the Tate Gallery arrived in London on the very day of his suicide.
• #25: His subjects characteristically represent modern life, has an unconventional almost telescopic composition that tilts the perspective. The street itself seems to be the subject of this painting the people are huddled under umbrellas or pushed to the sides of the composition. The figure to the far right is even cropped in half, as in a photograph and the couple strolling toward us are squeezed between him and the lamppost. Caillebotte's ambitious modem history painting Paris Street; Rainy Day, much like his Floor-Scrapers, shown the previous year, secured the artist critical appreciation at the Impressionist exhibition in 1877 for its "science of design and arrangement . "According to one reviewer, it was a canvas "that, despite the bizarre quality of some of its details and its jerky handling ... would still figure honorably beside pictures receiving the approval of the Champs-Elysees (official Salon) jury." Indeed, in the relative finish of its brushwork, in the well studied rationality of its composition, and especially in its impressive size, Paris Street--despite the shocking modernity of its subject-must have looked familiarly academic in 1877, betraying Caillebotte's recent study with the Salon artist Leon Bonnat . It even prompted one critic to exclaim that "M. Caillebotte is an Impressionist in name only," because in comparison to many of his colleagues who were being derided for daring to exhibit sketches as finished works of art, this painting demonstrated that Caillebotte "knows how to draw and paint more seriously. . . ."The fact that Caillebotte followed an academic rather than "Impressionist" method in many of the large paintings of his early career is evidenced by a group of preparatory drawings and oil sketches for Paris Street, through which the artist developed and altered his original conception for the picture. These studies and sketches certainly attest to the 'considerable effort' described by the critic Georges Riviere in 1877 in reference to the painting, and "how difficult it was and how much skill was necessary to complete a canvas of these dimensions." Nevertheless, they also demonstrate the lengths to which the artist went in order to construct an image that would appear at once both obsessively ordered and precariously fragile-a construction that constitutes the very basis of the picture's meaning.
• #31: Frank Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter and printmaker. He is a significant figure in minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.
• #32: 28 de setembro de 2010 Luiz Sacilotto (Santo André, 1924 — São Bernardo do Campo, 9 february of 2003) Was an brazillian painter, drawer and sculpter. One of the biggest expressions of the abstractionism on Brazil, he was revealed on the 40's. On 1943, was formed lyricist on the Professional Male Institute of Brás. On 1944 he ingressed on the University Center of Beautiful Arts of São Paulo to study drawing, stopping on 1947. Sacilotto started working then as publicitary and drawer of architeture. Still on 1947, he participated on the Show of 19 painters on São Paulo. On 1952 he won the Governator of The State Prize, on the Pro-Modern Art Society(SPAM). On the same year he signed the Manifest of The Rupture Group, appearing in his works "The Concretism".
• #35: Dutch painter Composition with red blue and yellow: This composition seems to be a variation of Mondrian's prior piece. The expansion in color adds brightness to this image. His focuses on the construction of rectangular shapes from different types of lines reveals his deeper understanding of contrast and balance. This piece, in addition to Mondrian's compositions from 1922 and 1929, demonstrates his focus on simplicity. Boardway boogie woogie: This is the last piece that Mondrian completed. From his earlier works, where he focused on large rectangular planes divided by long continuous lines, he zooms out his perspective and paints these rectalinear shapes into much smaller forms. There is an unexpected feel of rhythym, as if the composition is to resemble a dancing city. Using the opposition of contraries, a deliberate harmony  is found. When the war ended in 1919, Mondrian returned to France, where he would remain until 1938. Immersed in the crucible of artistic innovation that was post-war Paris, he flourished in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom that enabled him to embrace an art of pure abstraction for the rest of his life. Mondrian began producing grid-based paintings in late 1919, and in 1920, the style for which he came to be renowned began to appear. In the early paintings of this style the lines delineating the rectangular forms are relatively thin, and they are gray, not black. The lines also tend to fade as they approach the edge of the painting, rather than stopping abruptly. The forms themselves, smaller and more numerous than in later paintings, are filled with primary colors, black, or gray, and nearly all of them are colored; only a few are left white. During late 1920 and 1921, Mondrian's paintings arrive at what is to casual observers their definitive and mature form. Thick black lines now separate the forms, which are larger and fewer in number, and more of them are left white than was previously the case. This was not the culmination of his artistic evolution, however. Although the refinements became more subtle, Mondrian's work continued to evolve during his years in Paris. In the 1921 paintings, many of the black lines (but not all of them) stop short at a seemingly arbitrary distance from the edge of the canvas, although the divisions between the rectangular forms remain intact. Here too, the rectangular forms remain mostly colored. As the years passed and Mondrian's work evolved further, he began extending all of the lines to the edges of the canvas and he also began to use fewer and fewer colored forms, favoring white instead.
• #39: Weaving plays a role in the creation myth of Navajo cosmology, which articulates social relationships and continues to play a role in Navajo culture. According to one aspect of this tradition, a spiritual being called "Spider Woman" instructed the women of the Navajo how to build the first loom from exotic materials including sky, earth, sunrays, rock crystal, and sheet lightning. Then "Spider Woman" taught the Navajo how to weave on it. Use of traditional motifs sometimes leads to the mistaken notion that these textiles serve a purpose in Navajo religion. Actually these items have no use as prayer rugs or any other ceremonial function, and controversy has existed among the Navajo about the appropriateness of including religious symbolism in items designed for commercial sale. The financial success of purported ceremonial rugs led to their continued production.