BAROQUE Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

BAROQUE
The traditional blanket designation for European art from 1600 to 1750. The stylistic term
Baroque, which describes art that features dramatic theatricality and elaborate ornamentation in
contrast to the simplicity and orderly rationality of Renaissance art, is most appropriately applied
to Italian art of this period. The term derives from barroco.

ARTISTS:
PETER PAUL RUBENS (1577 – 1640)
NICOLAS POUSSIN (1594 – 1665)
HEINRICH WOLFLIN (1864 – 1945)
DIEGO VELAZQUES (1599 – 1660)
FRANCISCO DE ZURBARAN (1598 – 1664)
JUSEPE DE RIBERA (1591 – 1652)
HYACINTHE RIGAUD (1659 – 1743)

JULES HARDOUIN-MANDSART (1646 – 1708)

LOUIS LE VAU (1612 – 1670)
ROCOCO Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

ROCOCO
A style, primarily of interior design, that appeared in France around 1700. Rococo interiors
featured lavish decoration, including small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, easel paintings,
tapestries, reliefs, wall paintings, and elegant furniture. The term Rococo derived from the
French word rocal (“shell”) and referred to the small stones and shells used to decorate grotto
interiors.
• King Louie XIV started this movement by changing the elaborate designs into more
naturalistic and swirly designs – typifies the rule of Louis XV
• Marks a break in the Baroque grandeur to an intimate space
• Favours asymmetry and organic elements
• Idiosyncratic pieces
• Art focused on the pleasure of individuals
• Delicacy
• Informal and graceful
• Less oppressive
• Architecture brought down to a human scale
• Woman became powerful in this time period
• France

SO WHAT?
In France, King Louie XV came into power and changed the thinking about art. The Rococo
period only lasted during his lifetime.

ARTISTS:
GERMAIN BOFFRAND (1667 – 1754)
JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU (1684 – 1721)
FRANCOIS BOUCHARD (1703 – 1770)
JEAN-HONORE FRAGONARD (1732 – 1806)
ENLIGHTENMENT Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

ENLIGHTENMENT
The Western philosophy based on empirical evidence that dominated the 18th century. The
enlightenment was a new way of thinking critically about the world and about humankind,
critically about the world and about humankind, independently of religion, my, or tradition.
• Industrial revolution
• Belief in progress and in the power of reason
• Logic and lucidity
• Through the acquisition of knowledge and the application of reason, social,
intellectual and moral reforms could be effects
• Through reliance on reason progress was possible (empiricism)
• Change and progress would improve society
• The scientific stuff of nature implied that man and society could also be the object of
scientific study (religion became illogical)
• Human perfectibility through education and unlimited progress
• Convinced that nature was orderly and fundamentally good
• Enlightenment was essentially a product of French culture, life and Paris was its
capital
• Turned to the civilization of Republican Rome for inspiration
• Rejects the efficiency of prayer
• From brutal to urban reality
• Middle class began to rise that begins to challenge the hierarchy
• The idea that all people are created equal, everyone has a right to participate in
government

SO WHAT?
The Age of Enlightenment: belief in progress over religion.

ARTISTS:
JOSEPH WRIGHT OF DERBY (1734 – 1798)
NEOCLASSICISM Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

NEOCLASSICISM
Renewed admiration for classical antiquity. Incorporated the subjects and styles of ancient art.
The movement included painting, sculpture and architecture. There was a fascination with Greek
and Roman culture. Enlightenments emphasis on rationality explains this classical focus.
Geometric harmony of classical art embodied enlightenment ideals. Cultures focused on
traditions of liberty, civic virtue, morality and scarification. Neoclassicism was appealing during
the French and American Revolutions.
• Reaction against both the Baroque and Rococo art due to the Enlightenment
• Aesthetic attitudes and principals based upon the culture of ancient Greece and Rome
• Return to the classical ideal
• Simplicity, clarity, directness
• Emphasis on form, proportion, retain emotion
• Dominance of line (form defined by line)
• Conservatism
• Presentation of the idea-didactic
• Classicism refers to art proceeded in antiquity, or, inspired by antiquity

SO WHAT?
The Age of Enlightenment: belief in progress over religion. Wanted to reject the ways of both
Baroque and Rococo thinking.

ARTISTS:
JAQUES-LOUIS DAVID (1748 – 1825)
• Put his art in the service of the new French republic
• He lived the end of his life in exile in Bruges
• Drew faithfully from the antiques
• Ration synthesis of the read and the ideal
• Became the Neoclassic ideologist of the French Revolution
• Followed the Rococo painter style
• Rebelled against Rococo style as artificial taste and exhausted the perfect form of Greek
art

JEAN AUGUSTE DOMINIQUE (1780 – 1867)

 • The champion of Neo-Classicism
• He was a teacher
• Expressive contour
• Criticized for his gothic proportions
• Anger became the typical mood of Neo-Classicism
• Embraced what he believed to be a truer and purer Greek style compared to David who
he studied with
• A lot of works placed the figure in the foreground

BENGAMIN WEST (1738 – 1820)

JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY (1738 – 1815)
JAQUES-GERMAIN SOUFFLOT (1713 – 1780)
SIR CHARLES BARRY (1795 – 1860)
ROMANTICISM Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

ROMANTICISM
Rousseau contributed to the idea of Romanticism. “Man is born free, but is everywhere in
chains.” -Rousseau. It was believed that freedom of thought, action, speech, and political was the
right and property of all. It was achieved through imagination and feeling rather than reason and
thinking. Took place in the 18th century. Transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism
represented changed from reason to feeling. The Romantic imagination stretched its perception
of the Middle Ages into all the worlds of fantasy open to it (nightmarish, ghoulish, the terrible,
sadistic and everything that comes out when reason sleeps). Feelings of awe mixed with terror.
• Emotion over reason
• Senses over intellect, imagination
• Heightened examination of human personality
• Stressed individual viewpoint not the norm
• Irrational, spontaneous
• Concern with love, death, emotion
• Romantics dissatisfied with here and now; dream of distant places or the past
• Freedom from classical correctness
• Creative spirits is more important than strict adherence to formal rules
• Marie Shelly’s Frankenstein typifies this movement
• Gothic revival

SO WHAT?
The age of enlightenment was almost over. The period was a revolt against aristocratic social and
political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization
of nature.

ARTISTS:
THEODORE GERICAULT (1791 – 1824)
• French painter
• Violent action, powerful emotion
• Retained interest in the heroic and epic
• Well trained in classical drawing
• Produced works and captured the viewer with the drama, visual complexity and
emotional force
EUGENE DELACROIX (1798 – 1863)
• Innovative in terms of his treatment
• Emotional qualities of colour (experiments with colour)
• Painterliness (evident brushstrokes)
• Swayed by the scientific developments of the time and reflects that in his art
• Range of subjects
• Romantic colourist
• works were products of his view that the artists’ power of imagination that would capture
and inflame the viewers imagination
• first to embrace Etching and Quatiny
• most significant print maker since Rembrandt
• because a court painter in 1800

FRANCISCO DE GOYA (1746 – 1828)

• Artist from Spain
• Vigorous application of Spain
• Welcomed political enlightenment
• Went def
• Follows in Rembrandt’s footsteps
• Art is a channel for his fantasy
• He was David’s contemporary but their work had little in common
• Did not dismiss Neoclassic till consideration of enlightenment and neoclassic
impeachment for rationality and order
• Art is multifaceted in character but deals with traditional religious subjects

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH (1774 – 1840)

• Key German romantic painter
• Rendition of nature
• Spiritual and religious tone
• The landscape is sublime (awe inspiring but fear evoking)
• Among the first northern European artist to depict the romantic landscape
• Mood of his work demands from the viewer appropriate silence while being viewed

WILLIAM BLAKE (1757 – 1827)

• He could see something that other people could not see
 • Poet, artist and a writer
• He had a very strong engraving skills
• Subjective religious philosophy, he created his own personal mythology which was very
complicated
• His work is dominated by line
• Experiences
• Admired ancient Greek art because of mathematical and eternal
• Work often incorporates classical references
• Found art of the middle ages appealing like other romantics
• Drive many inspirations from poems and his dreams
• Believed that the rules of behaviour opposed by orthodox religion killed individuals
creative impulse

JOHN CONSTABLE (1776 – 1837)

• One of the first people to sketch outdoors
• Captures transitional light
• He doesn’t want to deal with industrial revolution so he turns to the rural
• Made countless studies from nature to help produce paintings with convincing realities
• Had a special gift for capturing texture of atmosphere

HENRI FUSELI (JOHANN HENRICH FUSSLI) (1741 – 1825)

SUBLIME Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

SUBLIME
An awesome majestic power of nature, earthquakes, floods and storms. A mystical images of
“supreme beauty”. A dynamic and powerful source (thunderstorm). This presents the sublime as
a overpowering – whether fear-driven or spiritual which this became and accepted part of
aesthetic experience.
• Awesome majestic power of earthquakes, floors and storms
• Mystic images of “supreme beauty”
• A dynamic and powerful force
• This presents the sublime as an over powering experience based on fear (Blake saw it as
divinely inspires)
• The notion stimulated an interest in the overpowering-whether fear driven or spiritual –
which this became an accepted part of aesthetic experiences
• Leans towards either natural or religious phenomenon

SO WHAT?
Continues and pushes the idea of Romanticism to the point of awe-inspiring either using nature
or religious contexts.

ARTISTS:
JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER (1775 – 1851)
• His early work is akin to constable, in the emphasis on the rural
• Later in his career he gets into the interplay of colour
• Known for his oil paintings
• Motive power of his colour usage
• Used a monochromatic pallet
PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics founded in
1848. Influenced by John Ruskin. They agreed with his distaste for material and the
contemporary industrialized world.
• White priming on the canvas instead of gray
• Used the idea of painting outdoors

SO WHAT?
Continued the retaliation of Romanticism and Sublime movements and wanted to focus on
nature and the awe-inspiring instead of progress and the urban life that the Enlightenment
entailed.

ARTISTS:
WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT (1827 – 1910)
• Does a very sentimental art
• Painting almost photographic in the way that they are rendered
• Notable for a great attention to detail vivid colour and elaborate symbolism

SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS (1829 – 1896)

• Rewarded and honoured during his life; had an easy life
• Adapted his style later to popular culture
• Very careful on his study of visual facts
• Study from nature

THEODORE ROUSSEAU (1812 – 1867)

• Painting sad landscapes
• Second key figured of French Enlightenment
• Instrumental to prepare ideologically for the French Revolution
• Declared that the arts, sciences, society and civilization in general had corrupted “natural
man”
• Humanities only salvation lay in a return to the “ignorance, innocence, and happiness” of
its original condition
• Thought that human capacity for feeling, sensibility, and emotions came before reason
 • “Man by nature is good…he is depraved and perverted by society.”

JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET (1814 – 1875)

• Concentrated on the figure rather than the landscapes
• Focus on rural society since he grew up there and knew the struggles
• Rural depopulation was a huge controversy at the time; a massive immigration from the
country to the city and people in the city felt threatened by overpopulation
• Found his subjects in people and occupations of the every-day world

JOHN RUSKIN (1819 – 1900)

WILLIAM MORRIS (1834 – 1896)
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828 – 1882)
SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES (1833 – 1889)
FORD MADOX BROWN (1821 – 1893)
JOHN WILLIAM WATERHOUSE (1849 – 1917)
ARTHRUR HUGHES (1832 – 1915)
CHARLES FRANCOIS DAUBIGNY (1817 – 1867)
JACOB VAN RUISDAEL (1629 – 1682)
JEAN-BAPTISTE-CAMILLE CAROT (1796 – 1875)

SCHOOLS
THE BARBIZON SCHOOL
• French school that picked up on the idea of painting outdoors
• Not every corner opens up to a marvousely picturesque vistas
• Unemotional, unsentimental
• Embraced the theme of truthfulness
• Not like baroque landscapes
REALISM Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

REALISM
A movement that emerged in the mid-19th-century France. Realist artists represented the subject
matter of everyday life (especially subjects that previously had been considered inappropriate for
depiction) in a relatively naturalistic mode.
• Movement that developed midcentury against backdrop of an increasing emphasis on
science
• Realist artists argued that only the things of ones own time was "real" much like
empiricism (search for knowledge based on observation) and positivism (science =minds
brightest achievement)
• Focused attention on the experiences and sights of everyday contemporary life
• Advances in industrial technology during the early 19th cent reinforced the
enlightenment's foundation of rationalism

SO WHAT?
Realism is a movement of art that was against Romanticism in France due to the industrial
revolution and the commercial revolution.

THE SEIGE AND COMMUNE OF PARIS (1871)

• The first truly working class revolution; rose up and took control
• 30,000 people executed in one week
• Courbet prevented the Louvre bring being looted at the time

ARTISTS:
GUSTAVE COURBET (1819 – 1877)
• Leading figure of the realist movement of the 19th century
• First antiestablishment artist
• Typifies realism as a movement
• Comes after the 1848 revolution
• Created a real taste of democracy among a lot of people
• Realism is an impartial reality
• Realism is an impartial reality
• Reality could be perceived without distortion of embellishment
• A revolutionary socialist who challenged the masses
 • He’s said “I can’t paint an angel because I’ve never seen an angel”
• Self taught artist by copying old artist in the Louvre
• Think application of paint
• Refused to follow the rules of the school
• Leading figure of the realist movement in 19th century
• Painted figures shunned by society like the mundane and trivial working-class laborers
and peasants
• Revolutionary socialist which challenged polished conver

HONORE DAUMIER (1808 – 1879)

• Produced lithographs and allowed a number of prints
• Defender of the urban working class
• Art boldly confronted authority and social criticism and political protest
• Defender of the working classes, paintings were political protest and was imprisoned
• Fact as object vs. illusion
• Boldly confronted authority with social criticism and political protest through his art
• Produced lithographs which allowed him to reach a broader audience
• His in-depth knowledge of political and social unrest in Paris during the revolutions of
1830 and 1848 endowed his work with truthfulness and power

THE BIRTH OF PHOTOGRAPHY

• Daguerreotype Camera (the mirror with a memory)
• 7th of January 1839 – process announced in French parliament
• William Henry Fox Talbot believed he invented photography first
• The Daguerreotype is limited because you cannot create multiple copies but creates a
much sharper image than Talbot’s process

INTRODUCTION OF ORIENTAL ART

ANDO HIROSHIGE (1797 – 1858)
KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (1760 – 1849)
KITAGAWA UTAMARO (1753 – 1806)
IMPRESSIONISM Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

IMPRESSIONISM
A late 19th-century art movement that sought to capture a fleeting moment, thereby conveying
the illusiveness and impermanence of images and conditions.
• Landscapes would have been painted outside
• It was really the Barbizon school that practiced this but impressionist painters
followed this
• Impulsive brushwork
• Summarized the shape of nature
• Visual impression of a scene; more about the mood than the subject
• Impressionism became popular in the 1890s
• First avant-garde artist came from the impressionist movement
• 1860 – 70: formation of the nucleus of the group
• The first exhibition they had 30 artist participate
• At first the word impressionism was used negatively
• Impressionism was coined by Lewis Leroy in a satiric review in Le Charivari for
Monet’s piece Impressionism, Sunrise
• Born from photography (based on the individual version of the artist) because the
photograph takes over realism

SO WHAT?
At the time, realism was all over France. With Emperor Napoleon III coming into power in
France, times were changing. A group of artists, whose works kept getting rejected by the Salon,
formed and created impressionism and created their own shows.

ARTISTS:
EDOUARD MANET (1832 – 1883)
• Central figure of the impressionist group
• First person to really deal with the subjects that Baudelaire brought up
• His father wanted him to be a lawyer but he never fulfilled his fathers wishes
• Forced into consideration of paint on a canvas
• The way he puts the paint on the canvas is more important than the subject he is painting
• He rejects the notion that the salon should be accepting only certain paintings
 • He paints contemporary subjects and he never joined the impressionist group no matter
how much they asked; he simply wanted to change the ideas of the salon, not create a
group against them
• He wanted to collapse the time frame in which he is viewing the subject, what is the
essential information about a certain scene and what is superficial, in that way he was not
exactly an impressionist painting
• Rejects the notion of illusionism, he doesn’t think of it as a window into reality, but
simply a canvas
• Artist who depicted Parisian nightlife
• Career bridged realism and impressionism

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841 – 1919)

• Content of his work is very sickly sweet
• Not cutting edge
• Had a lost of bourgeoisie clients throughout his career
• Centers on the relationship of reality and artistic forms
• Known for painting dapple of light as it filters through the trees
• Interest in impressionism
• Came from a working class family
• He distanced himself later on from the rest of the impressionist group and went back to
office salon painting

EDGAR (HILARIE GERMAIN) DEGAS (1834 – 1917)

• Antifeminism – was not a good man
• Most classically trained artist of all the impressionist
• He had a superb command of draftsmanship
• His painting style if verging on abstract compared to Renoirs
• Known for a consistent application and unusual compositions
• We can see the influence of Japanese art
• Not threatened by the introduction of photography; instead he embraced it
• He was born to a noble family; so he changed his name so as not to associate his work to
his family and his money
• Had very in depth schooling
• Depicted more formal leisure activities
• Classical ballet was one of his favourite topics
• Facilitation of photography that is seen in his work
 • Inspired by Japanese woodblock prints

CAMILLE PISSARRO (1830 – 1903)

• Most respected of all the impressionists
• Born in the Danish Antilles
• Moved to Paris and became interested in the effect of light
• Was the only artist to take part in all the impressionist exhibition
• He was an anarchist
• Antithesis of degas, he completely turned away from the salon
• Intended effect of breaking up planes through parallel brushstrokes
• He works with thickly applied paint
• Experimented with lot of different techniques
• Sometimes used photography to record the places he wished to paint
• Photography was used at accomplish a sense of spontaneity

MARY CASSATT (1844 – 1926)

• American
• Had a problem with the patriotically attitude of the teachers in America, so she left and
went to Paris
• She met Degas and became friends with him for some time
• Her contribution was the introduction of wealthy American clients of impressionist works
• Being a woman at this time she was restricted to a lot of locations, therefore she tended to
paint a lot of domestic scenes
• She thought of children as cute ball of energy than things that should sit and look pretty
(be seen and not heard)
• Granddaughter of Fragonard (a rich family)
• Subjects were mostly woman and child in a combination of objectivity and genuine
sediments

BERTHE MORISTO (1841 – 1895)

• Pivotal player in the impressionist group
• Great facilitatorl brought the group together for the exhibitions
• She was a people person
• Married to Monet’s brother
• She convinced Manet to take some of the black out of his canvas
AUGUSTE RODIN (1840 – 1917)
• Forerunner of modern sculpture
• Never accepted into the formal school of art which bothered him
• His work showed individualized model; very untypical of the time
• He put out his sculptures like a machine
• Conceived and executed his sculptures with realist sensibility
• Colour was not a significant factor but influence of impressionist was evident for concern
of effect of light
• Focused on the human form

CLAUDE MONET (1840 – 1926)

• Tired to capture the optical
• Only worked when conditions were right; watched the weather conditions
• Exhibited in the first impressionist show in 1874
• Painted outdoor which sharpened his focus on light and colour
• Did and study and understood how light and colour operated
• Makes no intent to blend the pigment to make smooth gradations which continued the
modernist exploration that the realist began

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (1821 – 1867)

HENRI GERVEX (1852 – 1929)
THOMAS COUTURE (1815 – 1879)
PAUL DELAROCHE (1797 – 1856)
ALEXANDRE CABANEL (1823 – 1889)
EUGENE BOUDIN (1824 – 1893)
FREDERIC BAZILLE (1841 – 1870)
ALFRED SISLEY (1839 – 1899)

SCHOOLS
SALON OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY
• Art gallery
• In the 1700s it opened up to the public
• Conservative art
• Annual exhibitions
• A million viewers (more than any blockbuster movies)
 • Artists strived to have their art accepted into the academy
• Bribery was used to have their art accepted by the academy
• If an art buyer went to buy a piece of art they would check the back to see if the painting
had been accepted or rejected by the academy

CEMETERY OF REFUSE
• In the late 1800s people began to get tired with how many paintings were being rejected
• In 1863, an exhibition of paintings that were rejected by the academy was created
POST-IMPRESSIONISM Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

POST-IMPRESSIONISM
The term used to describe the stylistically heterogeneous work of the group of late-19th-century
painters in France. The artist more systematically examined the properties and expressive
qualities of line, pattern, form, and colour than the Impressionists did.
• No longer crude and unfinished contemporary images
• Images in impressionism were neglecting tradition elements in attempt to capture
momentary sensations of light and colour
• So they began systematically examining expressive qualities of line, pattern, form and
colour – expressive capabilities of formal elements
• Roots in Impressionist precepts and methods, but is not stylistically homogenous

SO WHAT?
A group of artists felt that Impressionism was too traditional in it’s elements and decided to
change the ideals and values and create a new form of art.

ARTISTS:
PAUL CEZANNE (1839 – 1906)
“Treat nature by its basic forms: cylinder, sphere and cone; address in: volume, mass, weight.”
• Father of modern art
• Laid the basis for cubism
• Not popular until after his death
• He regarded himself as a dismal failure; that he never met his own expectations
• The reason he created his own particular style is because he couldn’t master the formulaic
method of the salon
• He took a weakness and turned it into a strength
• Amir Zola was a friend of Cezanne
• Pissarro helped him with his brush strokes
• He never got into school for art
• His art was rejected at the salon until 1862
• He did a lot of still lives
• A harmony running parallel of nature
• Early career he was an impressionist – first accepted their colour theories but learned that
impressionism lacks form and structure
 • Declared he wanted “make of impressionism something solid and durable like the art of
the museums”
• Unique way of studying nature
• Studied the effect of every kind of linear direction

GEORGES SEURAT (1859 – 1891)

• Died when he was 32
• His greatest legacy was his influence on other painters
• Paintings were impressionist subjects
• Depicted in a resolutely intelligent way
• Focused on colour annalist
• Concerned with immediate colour sensations and their systematic organization
• System was known as pointillism or divisionism

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864 – 1901)

• His work in posters was his lasting legacy
• Had a strong influence of art nouveau
• He used the simplification of forms: influenced by Japanese art
• He suffered form a genetic disorder, and was crippled by the age of 16 but always refused
to hide from society
• He drank alcohol a lot and behaved outrageously
• He lived in brothels for many years of his life
• He was more interested in doing art then talking about it
• Favoured artificial light
• Admired Degas and shared the impressionist interest of the sensibility of modern life
• Work has an added satirical edge and often borders on caricature

VINCENT (WILLEM) VAN GOGH (1853 – 1890)

• Got fired from his uncles as an art dealer for having an affair with a woman
• Sensitive, passionate and intelligent man
• The notion of the starving artist is rooted in Vincent’s story
• He believed he would eventually be discovered as an artist
• His legacy is his expressive use of line and colour
• Focused on the expressive dynamics of colour
• He liked to paint directly from nature
• He would change things to give it more expression and meaning
 • He went from periods of intense creativity to periods of depression
• He painted 200 canvases in one year
• The last years of his life were spent in a mental institution
• He cut off his own ear and brought it to a prostitute
• Before his suicide his work was just started to get rave revues
• He was influenced by Millet
• He worked rapidly, almost with desperation as if to lose the emotion that he was feeling
at the moment that he was painting
• Explored the capabilities of colour and distorted forms to express his emotions
• Repeated personal and professional failures brought him to despair
• Died of a self inflected gunshot at 37 because he considered himself a failure at being an
artist
• Only sold one of his paintings in his lifetime
• Most revered artist in history

PAUL GAUGUIN (1848 – 1903)

• Authentic symbolism
• Coseismal enabled work, enclosed with a thin strip of lead
• Where Gaugin and Vincent differed is the Vincent needed something in front of time
• Took lessons with Pissarro
• Like Van Gough, he rejected objective representation in favour of subjective expression
• Broke with impressionist studies and believed that colour above all my be expressed

EUGENE CHEVREUL (1786 – 1889)

EMILE BERNARD (1869 – 1941)
ARTS & CRAFTS Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

ARTS & CRAFTS

A late 19th century artistic movement led by William Morris which advocated a return to
medieval standards of craftsmanship and simplicity of design.
• Mental structures bent like organic forms
• Beautifying experience of public travel
• Ornamental, organic and linear style

SO WHAT?
The movement was to support manual laborers because they were being alienated by the
industrial capitalism. This it brought out the important in high quality artisanship and honest
labour.

ARTISTS:
WILLIAM MORRIS (1834 – 1896)
ART NOUVEAU Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

ART NOUVEAU
French, “New Art.” A late-19th-and-early-20th-century art movement whose proponents tried to
synthesize all the arts in an effort to create art based on natural forms that could be mass
produced by technologies of the industrial age. The movement had other names in other
countries: Jugendstil in Austria and Germany Modernismo in Spain, and Floreale in Italy.
• Set apart of historical style, modern form
• Rejection of ornamentation

SO WHAT?
The movement tried to create art based on natural forms that could be mass-produced for a large
audience.

ARTISTS:
HECTOR GUIMARD (1867 – 1942)
VICTOR HORTA (1861 – 1947)
ANTONIO GAUDI (1852 – 1926)
CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH (1868 – 1928)
AUBREY BEARDSLEY (1872 – 1898)
GUSTAV KILMT (1862 – 1918)

Session Exhibition Building (1897 – 1898)

ARCHITECT: JOSEPH MARIA OLBRICH (1867 – 1908)
SYMBOLISM Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

SYMBOLISM
A late-19th-century movement based on the idea that the artist was not an imitator of nature but a
creator who transformed the facts of nature into a symbol of the inner experience of the fact.
• Be the end of the 19th century representation of nature became subjective and artist no
longer created free from interpretations of it via expressing their spirit
• Forms conjured in free imagination with no reference to thinking conventionally seen
• Colour, line and shape because personal emotions in response to the world (spoke in
signs and symbols)
• To see through things to a significance and reality far deeper than what superficial
appearance gave
• “art for arts sake”

SO WHAT?
They wanted to stand against the materialism and conventional mores of industrial and middle-
class society and to purge literature and art of anything utilitarian.

ARTISTS:
EDVARD MUNCH (1863 – 1944)
• Paintings reflect the mood of the time
• He said he were born dying
• Illness, death and adultery
• Tense relationship with his father
• Believed humans were powerless before the great emotions of death and love were
associated with them
• Jealously, loneliness and fear became the theme of most of his art
• His goal was to describe the condition of “modern psychic life”
• Realist and impressionist techniques were used
• Both paintings and prints were highly emotionally charged

GUSTAVE MOREAU (1826 – 1889)

• Captured his periods flamboyancy in his work
• But tempered it with unsettling undertones
FRANZ VON STUCK (1863 – 1928)
• Used large heavy forms
• He liked sculpture
• Seductive females
• Was never popular until Hitler began to take a liking to his work

ODILON REDON (1840 – 1916)

• Most original symbolist artist
• Worked with black and most of his
• He was a visionary
• Adopted impressionist pallet and stripling brush strokes
• Projected figments of his imitation and coloured it whimsically

HENRI ROUSSEAU (1844 – 1910)

• Engaged in a powerful world of personal fantasy
• Untrained armature painter
• Compensated his visual and technical naive with a natural talent for design and
imagination

GUSTAV KLIMT (1862 – 1918)

• He Austrian symbolist painter
• Major works include paintings murals and sketches
• Primary subject was the female body
• Lived comfortably from Portraiture
• Has abilities to do historical art, but made choices to break barriers
• Work explores sexuality, human physic, death, love, regeneration

PAUL SERUSIER (1864 – 1927)

MAURICE DENIS (1870 – 1943)
PIERRE BONNARD (1867 – 1947)
EDOUARD VUILLARD (1868 – 1940)
EXPRESSIONISM Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

EXPRESSIONISM
20th-century art that is the result of the artist’s unique inner or personal version and that often has
an emotional dimension. Expressionism contrasts with art focused on visually describing the
empirical world.
• Exaggerated imagery
• Meant to reflect the artists state of mind rather than any realistic portrayal of the real
world
• Destruction of trust between people and the world
• The intent is to make things visible
• Removes us from reality

SO WHAT?
Began just before World War I. It was a movement that began in Germany. It was the age of
psychiatry with the interpretation of dreams being introduced by Freud.

ARTISTS:
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER (1880 – 1938)
• Had a deep admiration for German medieval art
• Part of the first group of German artists to explore expressionist ideas
• These artist protested hypocrisy and materialistic corruption of those in power
• Artist focused his attention on detrimental effect of industrialization such as alienation of
individuals and cities

HENRI MATISSE (1869 – 1954)

• King of colour
• Occupied with the notion of the perfect line
• The expressive empower of line and the expressive power of colour
• Art of Matisse is an act of expression and there is no right or wrong
• Dominate figure of the Fauve Group

ANDRE DERAIN (1880 – 1954)

• French artist
• Trying to make something credible of expressionism
 • Interpreted everyone tone of the canvas into another block of colour
• Worked to use colour to its fullest potential
• To produce aesthetic and compositional coherence to increase luminosity, and to elicit
emotional responses from the viewer
• Colour delineates space, and Derain indicated light and shadow not by differences in
values but by contrasts of hue

PABLO PICASSO (1881 – 1973)

• Not a rejection of past values, but to revive the characteristics that used a typify previous
works
• He re-did a lot of very famous works of other painters
• Born in Spain 4 years after Courbet’s death
• Mastered all aspects of late 19th century Realist technique by the time he entered the
Barcelona Academy of Fine Arts
• Made staggering contributions to new ways of representing the surrounding world
• Experimented with almost every artistic medium, but remained a traditional artist in
making careful preparatory studies for each major work
• Evolved from Spanish painting’s sober Realism through an Impressionistic phase to the
so-called Blue Period when in a melancholy state of mind, he used primary blue colours
to depict worn, pathetic, and alienated figures

ERICH HECKEL (1883 – 1970)

EMILE NOLDE (1869 – 1956)
GEORGE BRAQUE (1882 – 1963)
EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE (1830 – 1904)
MARCEL DUCHAMP (1887 – 1968)
GINO SEVERINI (1883 – 1966)
ANTON GUILIO BRAGAGLIA (1890 – 1960)
CARLO CARRA (1881 – 1966)
ANTONIO SANT’ELIA (1888 – 1916)
ETIENNE JULES MAREY (1830 – 1904)
FUTURISM Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

FUTURISM
An early-20th-century Italian art movement that championed war as a cleansing agent and that
celebrated the speed and dynamism of modern technology.
• Futurist Manifesto: 20th February 1909
o Printed on the front page of Le Figaro
o The futurists were interested in the future
o Universal dynamism: we are all connected between physical time and space
o Motion displaces space
o They interpret reality as something that’s always changing
o They had no definite style

SO WHAT?
The period was around pre-World War I. It looks at motion and how it is important in space.
This was inspired by speed and modern technology.

ARTISTS:
GIACOMO BALLA (1871 – 1958)
• Divisionalist technique
• Signed the Futurist manifesto
• Designed

UMBERTO BOCCIONI (1882 – 1916)

• Artist of the group that used the most sculpture
• Defined the term of simultaneity
• Was a fascist

KASIMIR MALEVICH (1879 – 1935)

• Supremacist
• Russian artist who perused the avant-garde direction of Cubism
• Developed an abstract style to convey his belief that the supreme reality in the world is
pure feeling, which attaches to no object
• Studied painting, sculpture, and architecture
• “Under supremacist I understand the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art, to the
supremacist, the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves,
meaningless”
• Basic form of his supremacist objective art was the square line and rectangle
• Thought everyone would understand his work due to the universality of its symbols
CONSTRUCTIVISM Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

CONSTRUCTIVISM
An early-20th-century Russian art movement formulated by Naum Gabo, who built up his
sculptures piece by piece in space instead of carving of modeling them. In this way the sculptor
worked with “volume mass” and “volume of space” as different materials.
• Link art to industry
• The idea of a classless world
• Learn the purpose of art
• Rejected the idea “art for art’s sake”

SO WHAT?
In Russia during the 1920s, volume mass and volume of space was important. Just before the
depression where progress and materialistic goods were vital. Therefore, they created a product
for a use rather than “just because”.

ARTISTS:
EL LISSITZKY (1890 – 1941)
• More of an engineer than an artist
• He travelled a lot and brought utopian social

ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO (1891 – 1956)

• Known for unusual viewpoints
• The camera is a means for changing the way that people see things
• By making photographs for obscure angles he spoke about breaking the belly button
perspective
• He is trying to involve the viewer in what he is trying to capture
• He wants to tell people to look at the world in a different ways
• Photography can lead to a new sense of vision
• Connection to viewers
• Everyone can learn to take a photograph

VLADIMIR TATLIN (1885 – 1953)

SERGEI EISENSTEIN (1898 – 1948)
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD (1874 – 1940)
FERNAND CROMMELYNCK (1886 – 1970)
DZIGA VERTOV (1896 – 1954)
ABSTRACT Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

ABSTRACT
Devoid of reference. There are two approaches – geometrical (supermisitm) and emotional
(inspiration and vision). Reducing the world down to geometric form in order to understand them
better.
• Devoid of reference
• Two approaches: geometrical (supermisitm) and emotions (inspiration and vision)
• Reducing the world down to geometric form in order to understand it better

SO WHAT?
During the depression, people looked back to their roots. They focused on more what was
important in life and wanted to create art that was inspired by the roots of the objects (geometric
shapes).

ARTISTS:
VISILY KANDINSKY (1866 – 1944)
• Sinistesia: had had an unusual sensitivity to sound, he could hear colours
• Horses take a great importance to Kandinsky
• His art has the power to uplift the human soul in a very non intellectual way
• Part of the 2nd major German expressionist group (the Blue Rider)
• One of the first artist to explore complete abstraction
• When he moved in Munich in 1896, developed a spontaneous and advent guard
expressive style
• Illumination of representational elements
• Convinced that material objects have no real substance

PIET MONDRIAN (1872 – 1944)

• Utopian idea that there could be the creation of universal language
• Predominant use of primary colours with black lines
• Intuitive insight into divine nature
• These and antithesis equals his synthesis
• Carefully constructed works that embody simplicity
• More extreme then the Russian constructivists
PAUL KLEE (1879 – 1940)
• Hard to categorize but impossible to confuse
• He developed a very unique pictorial style
• Looks like a relationship between music, primitivism and shapes
• Simplicity and childlike

FRANZ MARC (1880 – 1916)

GERRIT THOMAS RIETVELD (1888 – 1964)
WALTER GROPIUS (1883 – 1969)
WALTER GROPIUS (1883 – 1969)
JOSEPH ALBERS (1888 – 1976)
LASZLO MOHOLY-NAGY (1895 – 1946)
MARCEL BREUER (1902 – 1981)
LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE (1886 – 1969)

SCHOOLS
BAUHAUS SCHOOL
DADA Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

DADA
An early-20th-century art movement prompted by a revolution against the horror of World War I.
Dada embraced political anarchy, the irrational, and the intuitive. A disdain for convention, often
enlivened by humor or whimsy, is characteristic of the art the Dadaists produced.
• Began independently in New York but spread
• Dada was a state of mind or style more so than a style
• Attempted to undermine cherished notions and assumptions about art
• By attacking convention and logic, they unlocked new avenues for creative invention,
and fostered more serious examination of the basic premises of art

SO WHAT?
People thought reason and logic were to be help responsible for global warfare. They emerged in
reaction to what many of these artists saw an insane spectacle of collective homicide (World War
II). Only way to salvation was through political anarchy, the irrational, and the intuitive. These
views were parallel to Freud and Jung.

ARTISTS:
KURT SCHWITTERS (1887 – 1948)
• Inspired by Cubist collage but worked non-objectively
• Visual poetry in the cast-off junk of modern society and scavenged in garbage for
materials
• Collages still resonate with the meaning of the fragmented pieces they contain
• Objects acquire new meaning through new uses and locations
• Characters of Dad art due to: contradiction, paradox, irony, and even blasphemy

HANNAH HOCH (1889 – 1978)

• Perfected the photomontage technique
• Presented viewer with chaotic, contradictory, and satiric compositions
• Commentary on the redefinition of women’s social roles and the explosive growth of
mass print media
• Aware of the power both woman and Dada had to destabilize society, Hoch made
forceful visual manifestation of the belief
JOHN HEARTFIELD (1891 – 1968)
• An important photomontage German artist
• Focused on political and artistic representations
• Highly skilled with manual airbrushing to merge photos together
• Political points were made through his art (Hitler and hinancial institutions’ support)

MARCEL DUCHAMP (1846 - 1969)

• Favoured intellectual over optical engagement with art (forms, colurs, etc…)
• Art should always be ideas
• Along the lines of “I am an artist, so this is art”
• Conceptual rather than aesthetics
• Creates notion of redy-mades (common objects slightly altered using pre-existing
objects)
• One of the most influential Dadaists
• Art consisted of objects that had neither good nor bad taste-qualities shaped by society
• Persistently presented staggering challenges to artistic conventions

TRISTAIN TZARA (1886 – 1963)

FRANCIS PICABIA (1879 – 1953)
HERBERT BAYER (1900 – 1985)
SURREALISM Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

SURREALISM
A successor of Dada, Surrealism incorporated the improvisational nature of its predecessor into
its exploration of the ways to express in art the world of dreams and the unconscious.
Biomorphic Surrealists, such as Joan Miro, produced largely abstract compositions. Naturalistic
Surrealists, notably Salvador Dali, presented recognizable scenes transformed into a dream or
nightmare image.
• 1924, the first surrealist manifesto was published
• Exploration of how to express in art the world of dreams and the unconscious, inner
psyche and realm and realm of fantasy
• Main motivation was to bring the aspects of inner and outer reality together in a
single position
• Naturalistic surrealism artists present recognizable scenes that seem to have
metamorphosed into a dream or nightmare image
• Biomorphic Surrealism was predominated by automatism (the creation of art without
a conscious control)

SO WHAT?
Influenced by Freud and Jung. After World War I – people started to think differently and a lot
of manifesto’s were being created.

ARTISTS:
GIORGIO DE CHIRICO (1888 – 1978)
• Ambiguous works that position him as a precursor of surrealism
• Paintings of cityscapes and shop windows were part of a movement called Pittura
Metafisica (Metaphysical Painting)
• Images that transcend their physical appearances
• Influenced both Dadaists – because of incongruities in his work and Surrealists (because
they portrayed world of dreams)

RENE MAGRITTE (1898 – 1967)

• Expressed Surrealist idea and method of dreamlike dissociation of image and meaning
• Works administer disruptive shocks because they subvert the viewer’s expectations based
on logic and common sense
 • His works wreak havoc on viewer’s reliance on the conscious and the rational (pipe)

SALVADOR DALI (1904 – 1989)

• Critical paranoia – dreaming in a waking state
• Exploration of human psyche and dreams (Surrealist characteristics)
• Probed deeply erotic dimension through his paintings, sculptures etc (inspired by
Krafft=Ebing and Freud)
• Strived to make the world of his paintings as convincingly real as the most meticulously
rendered landscape based on a real scene from nature

JOAN MIRO (1893 – 1983)

NAZI ERA ART Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

NAZI ERA ART

Modern styles of art were prohibited, the Nazis promoted paintings and sculptures that were
narrowly traditional in manner that exalted the “blood and soil” values of racial purity,
militarism, and obedience.
• Degenerative art – art that was not endorsed by Germany and art that was un-German
or Jewish Bolshevist
• Also had an art exhibit called “degenerative art” that showed the people of Germany
propaganda on turning their heads at un-German or Jewish Bolshevist

SO WHAT?
The Nazis were trying to control the population by using art as propaganda for their beliefs.

ARTISTS:
ARNO BREKER (1900 – 1991)
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST
The first major American avant-garde movement, Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York
City in the 1940s. The artists produced abstract paintings that expressed their state of mind and
that they hoped would strike emotional chords in viewers. The movement developed along two
lines: gestural abstraction and chromatic abstraction.
• Abstract but express the artist's state of mind with the goal also of striking emotional
chords in the viewer
• Resulting works convey rough spontaneity and palpable energy
• A state free from structured feeling, and images whose realities are self evident
• Gestural abstraction relied on the expressiveness of energetically applied pigment, and
chromatic abstraction focused on color's emotional resonance

SO WHAT?
In the 1940s, the centre of the Western art world shifted from Paris to New York because of the
devastation of World War II inflicted across Europe. American artists then picked up the
European advent-guard’s energy, which started movements which Cubism and Dada had
fostered. Modernism increasingly became anonymous with a strict formalism (emphasis on an
artwork’s visual elements rather than subject).

ARTISTS:
JACKSON POLLOCK (1912 – 1956)
• Worked best exemplifies gestural abstraction
• Works consist of rhythmic drips, splatter, and dribbles of painting
• Responded to image as it was developing, he created art that was both spontaneous and
choreographed
• Technique highlights avant-garde aspects of gestural abstraction
• Emphasis on the creative process
• Improvisation was linked to the collective unconsciousness

MARK ROTHKO (1903 – 1970)

• Deals with universal themes
• Thought that references to anything specific in the physical world conflicted the sublime
idea of the universal, supernatural “spirit of myth”
 • His art then became compositionally simple with focus on colour as main conveyor of
meaning
• Saw colour as footway to another reality, and could express “basic human emotion”
• Highly evocative, moving paintings that relied on formal elements rather than specific
representational content to get emotional response from audience

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG (1925 – 2008)

• Used mass-media images in his work in the 1950s
• Combines – were his personal variation on assemblages, artworks constructed from
already existing objects
• In early 1960s he adopted the commercial medium of silk-screen printing
• Different from Dada collage because the parts of Rauschenberg’s combines maintain
their individuality

WILLEM DE KOONING (1904 – 1997)

FRANZ KLINE (1910 – 1962)
POP ART Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

POP ART
A term coined by British art critic Lawrence Alloway to refer to art, first appearing in the 1950s,
that incorporated elements from consumer culture, the mass media, and popular culture, such as
images from motion pictures and advertising.
• Moved away from individual excellence to a plurality
• Created art using every-day objects that were available to everyone
• The birth of mass culture (film, comic books, advertising)
• Aimed at images that were popular rather then cultural

SO WHAT?
The 1950s in Britain and the United States were the birth of mass culture. It’s when advertising
was at its prime and mass production was at its best. When families moved out to suburbs with
“white picked fences and 2 ½ children”. Artist took everyday items, celebrities and anything that
was “popular” at the time to create art. Sometimes, they copied it and others they made fun of
how society was changing.

ARTISTS:
JASPER JOHNS (b. 1930)
• A dealer that was going over to Rauschenberg house and saw Japer John’s work who was
his roommate and became interested in his stuff
• MOMA purchased 3 pieces of his work
• The readymade: found objects can be presented as finished works of art
• Interested in the issue and the medium chosen to execute it
• Social political issues of the time frame

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)

• Development of pop-art
• Projects blown up comic strips and then partly painted
• No longer has the gesture of the artist

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987)

• Never gave too much away, always answered questions different when asked
• Galleries began to recognize a certain trend and would gather those artists for an
exhibition, there was no particular group of people
 • Lived in Pennsylvania
• Quiet and shy
• Did jobs in advertising: principally doing shoes (Hired by Millar shoes)
• First type of art was very similar to Lichtenstein

RICHARD HAMILTON (b. 1922)

• Combined elements of pop art and fine art, seeing both as belonging to the whole world
of visual communication
• Sparkled viewer’s wide-ranging speculation about society’s values, and this kind of
intellectual toying with mass-media meaning and imagery
• Part of Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Art (sought to initiate fresh
thinking in art)
• Studied how advertising shapes public attitudes
• Copernican of consumer dreams happening in society in the time frame

CLAES OLDENBURG (b. 1929)

• Originally from Sweden
• Relates to high and low art
• Set up his studio in the lower east side (poor area)
• He created an alter ego for himself (transvestite)
• He became the epitome of “pop sheik”

SCHOOLS AND PERFORMANCES

BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLAGE (NORTH CAROLINA)
• Experimentation with interdisciplinary happenings
• Fluxes movement

FLUXUS
• Goal was to find aesthetic potential in the nontraditional and commonplace
• Expand to include Japanese and European artists
• Coin term “events” to describe their work
• These Events focused on single action “the theatre of the single event”
• Usually took place on stage separated from the audience, but dressed without added décor
• Events followed a compositional score, which gave the restricted nature of these
performances was short
DEFINITIONS Art History Study Guide Winter 2010

DEFINITIONS
ASTETITHISM: idea that art has to do with aesthetic beauty. Looked at in the Art Nouveau
period.

CLOISONNE: the technique favoured by the early medieval “treasure givers”, it documented at
least as early as New Kingdom in Egypt. It’s French for “partitions.” It is the crocs between
mosaic and stained glass.

CRONOPHOTOGRAPHY: Etienne Jules Marey’s strategy used a single camera with multiple
shutters, which allowed him to capture multiple exposures on one real film. He did this by
having a black background and a person dressed in white. It was linked to industrialization, and
ergonomics – a scientific push to find a way to do things by using the least amount of energy. He
dud this with a bird – a bird stays in flight by making a slow figure 8 with the wings. Later he
began dressing the people in black and put one tape connecting the joints so that was all that was
seen.

CUBISM: A way to break up space 3D

Art Pieces: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Pablo Picasso

DER BLAUER REITER (THE BLUE RIDER): It was akin with expressionism in the early
1930s. The bold expressionist landscape painting paint their feelings and visions from a scene in
front of them. The western society is discredited at this time. It depicts escapism. Theya re trying
to make a spiritual link between the artist and the viewer. The viewer is playing an important part
in the meaning of the piece.

DIE BRUCKE: In expressionism, the bridge to the future, centers around four architectural
students Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Fritz Bleyl. Emil
Nolde joined later.

DIVISIONISM: involves carefully observing color and separating it into its component parts
Art pieces: A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat

MODERNITY: a painting that speaks about the modern condition

Art pieces: Absinthe Drinker by Pablo Picasso.
PICTURESQUE: It was a largely visual movement. A mediator between the opposed ideals of
beauty and the sublime. It produces a strong, especially a visual and impressional. It promoted an
interest in the quant, the Old World, and the irregular.

POINTILLISM: involves observing colour and separating it into parts then applying pure
colour to the canvas in tiny dots cause shapes, figures and space to be only compressible from a
distance.
Art pieces: A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat

POLITICAL FUNCTION: involve the populous, allowing everyone to express themselves

Art pieces: Dynamic Suprematism by Kasimir Malevich

PHOTOMONTAGE: allows the artist to make something that looks abstract and real at the
same time without painting
Art pieces: U.S.S.R. Russian Exhibition (USSR Russische Ausstellung) by El Lissitzky

SUPREMATISM: In symboilism, the notion of art can be done by everyone is coming into play
at this time. Art becomes constructed rather than created. Art should serve the goals of society.
Art has to be accessible to everyone.

VERNACULAR GLANDS: art that is typical to an area

Art pieces: Canyon by Robert Rauschenberg