Art History
Diebenkorn’s still lifes pleasantly surprised me. They are mundane and melancholic yet playful. I was delighted to see how often coffee cups made an appearance. It’s an everyday object. Not special but nevertheless the subject of a meditative study.
Read MoreI participated in this centuries old practice for the first time when I was about 10. I copied Albrecht Dürer’s The Rhinoceros. At approximately 18” x 24”, it was the largest drawing I had ever made plus it looked gnarly. Even my older brother liked it and kept it safe after I tried to get rid of it.
Read MoreMaurice de Vlaminck, André Derain, 1906, Oil on Cardboard, 27 x 22.2 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
© 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
First, it was Pissarro (Impressionism) and van Gogh (Post-Impressionism). Then, German Expressionism and Cubism. Between these movements came Fauvism. While short lived, it had a remarkable impact. It liberated color from its descriptive role and introduced simplified form and decorative abstraction.
Read More“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters), 1799
Francisco Goya
Etching
21.5 cm x 15 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Are you a romantic or a realist? Do you prefer to feel or think? What is more important - imagination or reason?
Realism followed Romanticism which followed Neoclassicism which followed Rococo. Between 1700 and 1900, western art’s values bounced between feeling and reason over and over. Neoclassicism, defined by rationalism and classical antiquity, developed in reaction against the ornate and delicate Rococo style.
The leap from Rococo to Neoclassicism is apparent in the following paintings. The Swing (1766) is delicate, intimate and fanciful. It exemplifies the Rococo style. Portrait of Louise-Antoinette-Scholastique Guéhéneuc (1814), on the other hand, is orderly, formal and noble. Its reflects the moral values of Neoclassicism. Between 1766 and 1814, western art jumped from sentimental to rational.
Les hasards heureux de l'escarpolette (The Swing)
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
1766
Oil on canvas
2’ 8” x 2’ 2”
Wallace Collection
Portrait of Louise-Antoinette-Scholastique Guéhéneuc, Madame la Maréchale Lannes, Duchesse de Montebello, with her Children
Baron François Gérard
1814
102 3/8 x 72 1/16 in
Oil on Canvas
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
This jump in values occurred yet again with the development of Romanticism. Reason and science were the guiding forces of the late 1700s. However, by 1800, the benefits of technological advances and reason were questioned. Romantics argued that freedom was only real if men had freedom of thought, feeling and imagination. And so, western art became infatuated with feeling yet again.
There are many great Romantic artists, writers and philosophers. Eugène Delacroix is one of them. His painting Liberty Leading the People (1830) is an exciting example of Romantic art. It is dramatic, expressive and heroic. Liberty defiantly leads Parisians against Charles X . The triumph of freedom is tragic, emotional and glorious. Traces of Neoclassicism are hard to find.
Liberty Leading the People
1830
Eugène Delacroix
Oil on canvas
8’6” x 10’8”
Louvre
Romanticism also gave rise to the genre of landscape painting. While artists were certainly celebrating nature’s beauty, they were also using landscapes to comment on spiritual, moral, historical, and philosophical issues. Artists felt and expressed their feelings by way of landscape. Caspar David Friedrich, John Constable, and J.M.W. Turner are the most well known Romantic landscape artists. Friedrich explored nature’s transience and divinity. Constable instilled nostalgia for the past before the Industrial Revolution. Turner underscored turbulence and emotion.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, ca. 1817
Caspar David Friedrich
Oil on canvas
37 3/10 × 29 2/5 in
94.8 × 74.8 cm
The White Horse, 1818-1819
John Constable
oil on canvas
127 x 183 cm (50 x 72 1/16 in.)
Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner
90.8 x 122.6 cm (35 3/4 x 48 1/4 in.)
Oil on canvas
Realism, developing just after and somewhat alongside Romanticism, focused on “real” experiences and the everyday. While I respond well to Romanticism’s emphasis on nature and emotion, I also find Realism’s insistence on empiricism noble and important.
Realists turned their attention to the everyday. For the first time, ordinary people and trivial activities were brought to the forefront and (eventually) became relevant to the general public.
In Gustave Courbet’s The Stone Breakers two working-class men break stones. The scene documents a real event without drama and accurately depicts details. Using what was in front of him, Courbet makes a conclusion and shares his theory: poverty is inescapable. The young man on the left will remain in poverty and will likely continue breaking stones through old age like the older man to the right.
The Stone Breakers, 1849
Gustave Courbet
Oil on canvas
5’3” x 8’6”
Of course, Realism and its strong emphasis on rationality were left by the wayside with Impressionism. Again, the arts swung back to feeling over thought.
These swings between thought and feeling ring true to my everyday. My own values seem to swing between the two on a daily basis. Do I listen to my instincts or my thoughts? Do I create artwork that reflects my immediate response or that is carefully planned? It is easy to get stumped between the choices. However, the best course of action, is to make a choice and take a step forward.
All of my sources on the time periods discussed derive from the emphasis textbook Gardner’s Art Through the Ages.
Currently reading:
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir , Marina Abramovic
Should Every American Citizen Be a Yoga Teacher?, Alice Hines, The New York Times
Re-Imagining Yoga Teacher Training, J. Brown
90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality, Allison Yarrow
Currently listening to:
Social and Emotional Artistic Learning (SEAL), Art Ed Radio
Empire State of Mind, On the Media
The End of Empathy, Invisibilia
The Roman Mazda Virus, Reply All
