1. Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatti, 1785, French, Neoclassical, oil painting

• Revolutionary in form and content

• Depicts a scene from a Roman legend about a dispute between two warring cities, Rome and Alba Longa

• Importance of masculine self-sacrifice for one's country

• Sons giving their swords to their father (Horatii family)

• Pledging to their father that they will win the fight with dignity

• All of the people/figures in the painting are arranged on a horizontal line

• the three men on the left are pledging to their father that they will fight with dignity and are willing to die

• Women are in agony because they know that they are going to lose someone in this fight

• all the women are either a sister or wife of the brothers and are the only evidence that suffering will occur

• King wanted his people to stop complaining, instead they saw it as a need for a revolution

• King removed it and put it in the basement

Eugene Delacroix, The 28th July, Liberty Leading the People, 1830, oil on canvas, French, Romanticism, oil painting

• Commemorates the french revolution

• People’s faces and outfits are contemporary

• This is a real event, not a historical depiction

• Woman, man of color, and a woman are all fighting. They share a common goal

• First time in art that we see pubic hair (guy in bottom right corner has bush peeking out)

• The woman with the flag is a representation of freedom and victory, she steps over the dead because war is ugly/unfair, she must fight on.

• The Statue of Liberty is based off of this painting/women to represent freedom and liberty

William Henry Fox Talbot, The Open Door, 1843, British, photography

• British scientist who announced his invention of photography

• Sparked debate of photography being art vs. science

• Photography seen as potentially being the end to painting--1839

• Romanticist style:

• camera is out of focus so it is fuzzy edge image

• Mystery of the dramatic contrast

Katsushika Hokusai, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” 36 Views of Mt. Fuji, 1831, Japanese, woodblock print

• Fuji= former volcanic mountain that can be seen for miles

• Not as realistic as other paintings we have looked at in the past, not intended to be realistic

• Cartoon-like, forms are simplified

• In the wave there is just black and blue, no shading

• Long fishing boats have people in them but it isn’t important because it isn’t about seeing them, it’s more so about what they might have felt

• Decorative

• Artist repeats triangular form of Mt. Fuji and the curves of the boats and the waves throughout the painting

Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1872, Impressionism, oil painting

• Emergence of impressionism- presents a completely different view of the world

• One person’s perception of their corner of the world

• Fundamentally premised on how it felt to be present during this moment in nature

• Exaggeration of what is in front of him

• Makes radical decision to use brush strokes to stand out on their own (flickering brush stroke) (CRAZY!)

• Communicates the intensity of the color, reliant on intense color to convey mood

• Optical truth= reality of on the spot observation

• Paints from beginning to end-- En plein air

• Monet uses color wheel to ensure maximum intensity of colors

• Using blue and orange  

• Not liked by the audience

Vincent Van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889, Dutch, Post-Impressionism, oil painting

• Cut off his own ear

• interested in making maximally emotion/expressive content

• surface that is a thick surface of paint

• blue and orange

• dizzy repetitive brush strokes

• sky appear full of life

• Cypress tree appears tormented-- tree of death

• he distorts the perspective and is on an “equal” level with the sky (for an emotional effect)

• natural objects

• tree-torment→ only sad part about painting

• he creates an illusion of the wind with the repetitive brush strokes

Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1887, French, Post-Impressionism, oil painting

• Picture of what he sees when he looks out the window at his house

• Mont Sainte-Victoire→ “Victory Mountain”

• Petit cube→ geometric marks rather than brush strokes

• Paintings are all about tension

• whole scene fits on canvas, doesn’t encourage depth or movement

• reinforces idea of perspective/space/dimension/tension

• dynamic tension is what the pictures are all about

• modern understanding of the world

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, Spanish, Cubism, oil painting

• painting: a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order (Picasso’s definition)

• *Cubism*-style based on the spatial concept of the 4th dimension, known as space/time

• the effect of a shattered mirror

• African Mask Heads

• Sexual anxiety

• The hookers of Barcelona (would): Demoiselles meaning

• Syphilis common issue at the time (penis rotting)

• possibly portrayed in the painting

• Beginning of movement of art to completely abstract

Anonymous, Fang Tribe, Ritual Mask, 19th century, African, painted wood (sakai)

• ??

Vassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 28, Second Version, 1912, Russian, Non-objective abstraction, oil painting

• Kandinsky-Russian immigrant to Germany

• breaks through painter’s block

• First time totally abstract art exists

• makes the choice to abandon objectness

• No identifiable objects

• form and colors unrelated to objects in the natural world

• forms and colors--intrinsic meanings regardless of context

• emotional content

• Work represents panic, confusion, and destruction

• Use of explosive colors and forms

• Representative of WWI which was breaking out at the time

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Yellow, Red and Blue, 1927, Dutch, De Stijl, oil painting

• Blocks are moving off of the campus

• There are no black lines to contain them

• Very calm painting

• Hand skill plays no hand in this work and other similar works

• Evaluating the art is deemed more important

• tremendous optical, spiritual, and intellectual power

• ordered, geometric world representation

• Utopian Faith

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, French, Dada, readymade sculpture

• (talked about a lot)

• Duchamp is greatest Dada artist but never pledges allegiance to it

• More interested in ideas rather than visual product

• Public urinal exhibited as art

• Duchamp signs it “R. Mutt” which means “Our Mother” in German

• Takes it out of a hardware catalog

• This sculpture proves that just about anything can become art

• “if anything is art, then nothing is art”

• Icon of modern industry.. Question as to if he is celebrating it or cynical about it

• Making some sort of reference to the Virgin Mary?

• Urinal is turned upside down making it look like a female pelvis

• Taking a male gendered object and making it a female object

• Title is witty and creative, used as a hook to draw audience in

• Without the man in front of it using it for it’s original purpose then it’s technically not a fountain

Salvador Dali, Persistence of Memory, 1931, Spanish, Surrealism, oil painting

• premised on your free association of the work, so no rigid meaning to it?

• meant to make the viewer feel uncomfortable

• uses realistic painting style to suggest that something completely non-sensical is realistic

• some dead thing in the middle of it, melting clocks represent the irrelevance of time

• time is relative to space

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939, Mexican, Surrealism, oil painting

• painted when shes going through a divorce

• shows kahlo bleeding to death

• has a picture of her husband at the end of her artery, aka her husband is a source of death for her

• woman in mexican peasant dress versus a colonial woman in a traditional colonial wedding dress

• woman as a martyr

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, Number 30, 1950, American, Abstract Expressionism, mixed media

• very radical announcement of the importance of the unconscious and the subconscious

• called “drip and splatter” technique

• in the Met

• Wicked large, biggest work we have seen to date

• Pollock is poor so he doesn’t use fine art materials

• Paints on the floor, uses shitty canvas with holes in it, uses industrial house paint

• Just throwing paint all over the canvas

• Pollock steps into canvas while painting

• He isn’t interested in visual art, more so ideas

• Pollock’s appealing to surrealists

• Emphasis on the unconscious

• Dynamic expression, messy, chaotic

• Important to feel fear, anxiety, or chaos when looking at this

• What looks to be out of control is actually very rhythmic

• Splotches of brown, white, black, very rhythmically placed throughout the painting

• Depicting late fall when all there is is “ash and death”

Mark Rothko, Orange, Red, and Red, 1962, American, Abstract Expressionism, oil painting (Sakai)

• Basically just a big red picture

• Rothko’s technique is just as radical as Pollock’s, also uses poor quality materials

• Essentially staining color onto the canvas

• Layers in 35-36 layers of paint

• Apparently as your eyes keep looking at it you see more colors or something?

• Rothko’s works almost always look like they’re illuminated from within

• Implosion of light and color from within

• Mood of vast and empty cosmos

• 2 rectangles separated by a line that appear to be clouds due to their blurriness

• Line suggests a horizon

• Described as explosions of clouds over the landscape and a metaphor for dropping the atomic bomb

• Emphasis on silence and meditation

David Smith, Cubi XVIII (18), 1963-1964, American, Abstract Expressionism, sculpture

• Major abstract expressionist artist who never pledges allegiance to abstract expressionism

• Smith responsible for the revival of sculptures

• One of the smallest works ever of his (his sculptures are huge, meant to be metaphors and compete with giant old trees in the landscape)

• Interested in geometric shape

• Mood of implicit angst

• This work and works like these by Smith are essentially defying logic

• No way to make sense of how the blocks on this sculpture remain stable

• Frozen moment of anxiety

• Amalgam of Pollock and Rothko

• Welded aluminum and stainless steel (not used in art before this)

• Commitment to modern materials

Andy Warhol, Elvis I and II, 1964, American, Pop, silkscreen

• Warhol: What you see is what you get, nothing below the surface

• Stolen from a movie poster, very impersonal, indifferent

• Uses silk screening, as a commercial technique

• He could produce thousands of copies without losing any parts of the work

• Use of repetition

• Suggests that identity fades over time and loses meaning

• fading identity of our pop stars very relevant

• he is wearing make up

• he is mixing macho masculinity with a man wearing make up

Faith Ringgold, Flag for the Moon, 1969, American, Protest Art, oil painting

• we should not look through the flag, which is why she made it a pop art painting--you do not need to look through/linger across pop art to get the meaning

• stars said die and the stripes say nigger and shows that racism was big at this time

Eva Hesse, No Title, 1969, American, Minimalism, Sculpture

• went to the hardware store, got rope and hung it fairly randomly in the art gallery. She is writing in space with rope

• she was on the kids train during the holocaust and sent away from her parents but by some miracle her parents survived and reunited with her

• Finds her mother hanging from a noose after she killed herself...reason for the ropes

Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1974-79, American, feminist sculpture

• Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space

• the triangle is essentially a metaphor for a dinner table, she crafted all of the dinner plates, runners, cups, etc. herself

• 39 place settings

• Each setting represents an important woman in history (ex: Virginia Woolf), either historical or mythological figures

• Invited them to this dinner so she can hear what they have to say and see the beauty and range of our heritage--one we have not yet gotten the opportunity to know

• When she begins this work, basically nothing is known about women’s history

• equilateral triangle to represent equality

• In the ground area between the tables she inscribed the names of 999 other women

• Very controversial at the time and still controversial, essentialism (characteristics that join a group of individuals)

• Condemned as lesbian and pornographic art

• Plates are shaped in order to represent female genitals

• Raised a lot of political issues

Christo and Jean-Claude, Running Fence, 1972-76, American, site art

• outdoors directly involved in structure/meaning of work

• husband and wife team

• 24.5 miles long, 18 feet high fence in California and terminates in Ocean (nylon)

• resensitization of people to their natural environment

• fence draws attention to the land, and also to the sociological import to the fence

• shape determined by land itself, typography of the land

• separates nothing from nothing, middle of nowhere---is it necessary?

• completely different work at sunrise and sunset because of how the sun hits the nylon it looks completely different

• it also makes sound on the nylon when the wind blows, making this piece of art a musical piece too

Joseph Beuys, I Like America and America Likes Me, 1974, German, performance art (Sakai)

• Performance arts vs. Performing art

• Performance art doesn’t have to be represented by art

• This is a photograph of one of his performances that happened over the course of 2 weeks

• Him and a wild coyote live in a studio for 2 weeks, he wraps himself in felt and and had a shepherd’s cane thing to give the idea he was one

• Coyote trained to shit on the wall street journal (Symbolic)

• Basically saying if two species can live together in harmony why can’t people?

• Able to live together without any implications of violence after some time together

• Always references the things that resurrected him (Animals, felt)

• Biography most likely a lie

Jenny Holzer, Untitled, 1989-90, American, Conceptual Art

• De-emphasize the image of the work but focus on the idea behind it

• Artist who uses words

• Inside the Guggenheim Museum in NYC

• Guerilla/Street artist

• Flashing LEDs

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, 1954-1958, German, International Style, skyscraper

• steel frame skeleton

• glass curtain wall

• Symbolizing all that is new

• Style is picked up internationally

• revealed skeleton

• stops building when he feels the horizontal and the vertical are in balance

• on the top it is vented and gives it the impression that the building is done. It contributes to the lightness of the building

• includes a plaza to ensure sunlight when you enter the building

• drops entrance to our scale

• dominant building type of the first half of the 20th century

Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum, Spain, 1993-1997, American, Post-Modern architecture

• takes brutalism aesthetic and makes them into extraordinary buildings

• curvilinear forms

• rejects everything architecture has been about to this point

• the building seems to grow like pedals

• Cartoon-like

• use of titanium as a material→ has as much strength as steel but much lighter

• it is architecture as a sculpture

Damien Hirst, For the Love of God, 2007, British, Post-modern, sculpture (Sakai)

• Platinum cast of an actual human skull

• surface is encrusted with 8,601 perfect diamonds

• took the artist $22 million to produce it, and the asking price is $80 million

• death which is the subject of this work is also the subject of many of Hirst’s works

• Claiming victory over death

• Preservation of the skull with beautiful surface of diamonds

• Money beats death

• question as to if this work is critiquing or participating in the immortality of the art world

• Hirst often uses decaying animal/human parts in his work

• Relying on the excess of these materials

• Title comes from Hirst’s mother who said “Damien for the love of God what’s left for you to do now?”

Banksy, Spray Art $60, 2013, British Spray Painting

• Banksy is wanted by the police in most nations (including the United States)

• Anonymous British graffiti artist

• Question as to if Banksy is a man or woman

• works are satirical, usually anti-war

• Went to NYC for a month and every day he etched graffiti in some public place

• None of his works are sold, he doesn’t want to sell them except below

• he had someone else sell his work for $60 each and people would pass it by and not be interested because no one knew it was banksy

• no one bought anything

• his work that people know is his is sold for thousands

• the next day imposters would try and sell the same work and then people started buying it