arts analysis
ARTS 1A
Topic 7: Visual Power
In Topic 6 we explored signs and symbols in art through three methods of interpretation: Iconology, Iconography, and Semiotics.
In Topic 7 we will explore the visual power of art as we consider two additional methods of interpretation:
• Formal Analysis
• Stylistic Analysis
First, click on the link below and watch the following short video, “Christo and Jean-Claude’s Running Fence”:
https://youtu.be/nBVpgN4JAsE
Pair 1: Christo and Jeanne-Claude and Dieric Bouts
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
I. In 1972, collaborative artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude began a work which, in their own words, ”involved the life of the people related to the ocean from the urban, rural, to the countryside in California.” Ultimately, this project, Running Fence, took the shape of a 24.5 mile nylon fence which stretched from Sonoma and Marin counties into the Pacific Ocean.
Running Fence was a visually impressive work of art, appearing like a ribbon of light upon the northern California hills. Artists are often required to be skillful manipulators of line, and Running Fence was particularly dynamic as a result of the artists’ understanding of line direction, in which line is manifest as vertical, horizontal, diagonal, or variable, in relation to the viewer’s eyes. Since Running Fence followed the contours of natural hills, its direction shifted constantly; its line direction, therefore, was variable.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Running Fence Sonoma and Marin Counties, California
1972-1976
White nylon fabric mounted on steel cables
II. When analyzing Running Fence, we are faced first and foremost with the elements of art, especially light and line. And since Running Fence depended upon nature—one might go so far as to say that it revealed nature, since the contours of the hills in Sonoma and Marin counties became more noticeable with Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s white nylon fence atop them—it is appropriate to focus on the elements of art when interpreting this work. Formal analysis is a method of interpretation which asks, “How do the elements of art and principles of design shape the production and meaning of a work of art?”
Dieric Bouts
I. In 1464, painter Dieric Bouts was commissioned by the Church of St. Peter in Louvain (located in modern-day Belgium) to produce an altarpiece: a work of art which stands or hangs behind an altar, serving a religious purpose. The surviving contract stipulated the subjects Bouts was responsible for depicting in the altarpiece. The contract also determined that Bouts could not accept other large jobs until this project was complete. In an era when artists’ freedoms were limited by the needs of patrons, how was Bouts able to work creatively?
The interpretive method of formal analysis reveals how Bouts worked with the elements of art and principles of design to produce a work that was highly ambitious, especially if considered within the community in which Bouts was working.
Dieric Bouts
Last Supper Center panel of the Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament
1464-1468
Oil on wood
II. Note how the floor tiles and the ceiling beams draw your eyes to the center of the painting, where Christ sits at the head of the table. The artist attempted to create the appearance of space receding into the distance, and within such a context these parallel lines are called orthogonal lines. Their presence indicates Bouts’s implementation of linear perspective: a way for an artist to convey the illusion of a three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface by positioning each figure and object in the picture within a pre-determined mathematical grid.
Linear perspective was used by painters in Italy as early as the 1420s, but it took decades for northern European artists such as Bouts to begin to implement it in their work. That Bouts used it in this altarpiece, which was an important public commission, indicates his willingness to work to the “best of his ability,” as required by the contract.
Pair 1
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Analysis Exercises: Pair 1 Exercise 1: Christo and Jeanne-Claude called attention to hills by building an enormous white fence on them. Dieric Bouts called attention to the ceiling and floor of the architectural structure in which he depicted Christ’s last supper. Why do you think artists so often rely on nature or built structures as the starting point when designing a work of art?
Exercise 2: Christo and Jeanne-Claude and Bouts, too, relied on line direction to give their works a sense of movement. Describe the multiple direction(s) of lines in their work. Vertical? Horizontal? Diagonal? All of these?
Exercise 3: The use of light in Running Fence is, of course, natural, since the work is illuminated by sunlight. How would you describe Bouts’s approach to light?
Pair 2: Francis Hopkinson and Barbara Kruger
Francis Hopkinson and Mary Young Pickersgill
I. In 1813, while the United States was at war with Great Britain, Baltimore seamstress Mary Young Pickersgill was commissioned by American military personnel to produce two enormous flags to fly over the garrison of Fort McHenry. The flag pictured here, which originally measured 30 x 42 feet, would inspire the U.S. national anthem, ”The Star Spangled Banner.” To produce the flag, Mary Young Pickersgill, along with several family members and neighbors, including a free woman of African descent named Grace Wisher, worked with cotton and wool in the reverse appliqué process, in which shapes are cut away and fabric stitched to the underside.
Francis Hopkinson
The Star Spangled Banner
1813
Cotton and wool
•f f
II. The flag was designed in 1777 by Francis Hopkinson, who was a writer, composer, civil servant, and judge from Philadelphia. Hopkinson’s original design included thirteen stars and stripes. The fifteen stars and stripes in The Star Spangled Banner represent the number of states at the time his design was approved by Congress in 1794.
Mary Young Pickersgill and the other seamstresses who worked on the flag in 1813 carefully measured, cut, and stitched the stars and stripes, positioning shapes of equal size in equal distances from each other. They worked in to achieve a principle of design known as regular rhythm, in which shapes are repeated with a standard interval between them to achieve the desired visual effect. Without text, the uniformity of the shapes and the regularity of their repetition communicated that each individual state was considered to be of equal importance to the others.
Barbara Kruger
I. Barbara Kruger is a New York based artist who blends text and imagery to produce works of art which are powerful both visually and ideologically. An untitled mural she produced for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles confronted viewers with a series of questions about who holds power in the United States. Like The Star Spangled Banner, Kruger’s Untitled (Questions) was not meant to be a permanent fixture at the site for which it was initially produced.
Before becoming an artist, Barbara Kruger worked in advertising, a practice which influenced her ability to communicate ideas with startling clarity. From color choice to typeface—that is, the font family chosen by an artist—to layout, every aspect of Untitled (Questions) was carefully planned to maximize the impact of visual forms as well and ideas.
Barbara Kruger did not intially consider the impact of this work on the Japanese-American community of Los Angeles who would live and work with it in their urban environment. Her initial design for the mural featured the “Pledge of Allegiance” at the center, with questions about power at the top and bottom.
Upon learning about plans for this mural in their neighborhood, some community members protested. For some, it served as a painful reminder of the incarceration of Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II. Those forced to live in the camps had been required to recite the “Pledge of Allegiance” while living behind barbed wire fences. After meeting with community members Barbara Kruger changed her design to eliminate the pledge. Some members of the community found the revised mural design to be powerful. Some even embraced it as a work which reflects their own experiences as Americans.
Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions) Los Angeles
1989-1992
Acrylic paint on a prepared wall
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II. Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Questions) required the artist to incorporate the diverse shapes of letters in the Roman alphabet into her design. Still, to manage her viewers’ visual attention she produced rows of text in rhythmic harmony. Unlike the design for The Star Spangled Banner, Kruger’s Untitled (Questions) relies on an approach to rhythm called random rhythm, in which a visual effect is achieved by repeating shapes without a specified order or arrangement. Here the artist maintains an equal distance between the four lines of horizontal text from top to bottom. However, the shapes of letters are so variable that they interrupt the regular flow of rhythm, offering instead the effect of randomness.
Pair 2
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Analysis Exercises: Pair 2
Exercise 1: What do these works have in common on a purely visual level? How do they differ visually?
Exercise 2: What do these works have in common on an ideological level? How do they differ ideologically?
Exercise 3: Which work is more powerful to you on a visual level: The Star Spangled Banner or Untitled (Questions)? Why?
Pair 3: Piet Mondrian and Richard Serra
Piet Mondrian
I. Unlike Annie Mae Young and Jean Arp, Dutch artist Piet Mondrian cultivated an appreciation and reliance on geometric shapes: shapes which appear to have been produced with the aid of a mechanical instrument to insure precision. In Composition, a non-representational oil painting made by Mondrian in 1929, he reduced his “subject” to geometric shapes in primary colors and white, and separated them with thick black horizontal and vertical lines.
Piet Mondrian
Composition
1929
Oil on canvas in artist’s frame
II. Mondrian began his painting career in the late nineteenth century as a landscape artist but gradually eliminated representation of recognizable objects in favor of horizontal and vertical lines and primary colors. He was part of a group called De Stijl: an early twentieth century art and architecture movement in The Netherlands whose participants embraced the concept and practice of reducing forms in nature to their “essentials”.
The members of De Stijl published a magazine to educate the public about their aims. De Stijl, like Dada, began largely as a response to the First World War. Unlike Dada, the members of De Stijl were idealists who hoped that the widespread adoption and application of their principles of art and design could be useful in rebuilding Europe. De Stijl is a Dutch phrase that means “the style”.
Richard Serra
I. In 1981, American artist Richard Serra produced Tilted Arc, a site-specific installation commissioned by the U.S. government for Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan. A site-specific installation is an installation designed for a specific place. Tilted Arc, a 12-foot high work of non-representational art, was not popular with people who worked in and around the plaza. Persistent complaints about the installation led to the official removal of Serra’s work from Foley Federal Plaza in 1989.
Richard Serra
Tilted Arc Foley Federal Plaza, Manhattan
1981; dismantled 1989
Unfinished COR-TEN steel
II. Richard Serra is part of a twentieth-century art movement called Minimalism which began after World War II, whose participants sought to reduce art to its essential materials. For Tilted Arc, Serra chose COR-TEN steel, which is designed to rust over time if left unprotected.
After its removal, Tilted Arc was stored in a government parking lot until it was placed in permanent storage. As a site- specific work, the artist will not allow it to be reassembled in an alternative location.
Pair 3
Analysis Exercises: Pair 3 Exercise 1: Both Composition and Tilted Arc rely on the artists’ use of geometric shape(s). Which work of art incorporates a more basic application of geometric shape? Explain your answer.
Exercise 2: Mondrian and Stella both had public relations problems, and took elaborate steps to explain their work. Why do you think the public tends to reject works of non- representational art, especially in public places?
Exercise 3: Mondrian became a non-representational artist after working as a landscape painter. Does Composition retain a relationship to the subject category of landscape? Can you ascertain a relationship between Tilted Arc and the landscape subject category, or perhaps a different subject category?
Pair 4: April Gornik and Emil Nolde
April Gornik
I. Viewers who desire to find meaning in April Gornik’s Light Falling Through Trees might try first to discover the location of the site she depicts. The site, however, is not real. It is imagined.
While the forms of the trees are imagined, the artist has labored to provide the natural effect of light among them. We could, therefore, turn to formal analysis to try and understand how and why this work was produced, since the artist emphasizes ones of the elements of art—light—in the title of this work: Light Falling Through Trees. The idea of a specific place lessens in importance when we consider the skill with which she manipulates an element of art—specifically, light—convincing us that it, alone, is real.
But viewers might want to consider this work even more deeply. There is no evidence of human presence in the landscape. All we have are the forms of the trees and the way the artist has stylized them. How might we to characterize April Gornik’s approach to art making, in the language of style?
Stylistic analysis requires viewers to examine the artist’s treatment of forms to ask, “How does the artist’s approach to style shape the production and meaning of this work?” Unlike formal analysis, in which the elements of art and principles of design are explored, stylistic analysis requires viewers to consider whether forms within a work of art are natural, abstract, or ideal, with the purpose of understanding how and why art was produced during a particular period in time.
April Gornik
Light Falling Through Trees
2014
Charcoal on paper
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II. Light Falling Through Trees is a charcoal drawing. Charcoal is a dry drawing material made of charred wood. When applied to paper, an artist using charcoal can achieve a wide range of values and textural effects. Charcoal drawing became a popular way to depict the landscape in Europe in the nineteenth century. As such, April Gornik is working in a highly traditional mode when she chooses charcoal to produce a large-scale landscape drawing.
What is non-traditional about this work is that April Gornik imagines rather than describes the landscape. Since the forms in this work are so clearly based on nature, including nature’s irregularities, she is able to fool us into thinking she is describing an actual place.
Emil Nolde
I. Like most works of art, Sunflowers in the Windstorm by Danish-born artist Emil Nolde may be interpreted in a range of ways. However, given the historical circumstances of its production, stylistic analysis offers an especially effective lens with which to examine it.
Having attained a successful career as a modern artist in Germany during the early decades of the twentieth century, Nazis decided that the boldness of Nolde’s work was troubling. They removed more than a thousand of his works from museums after Nolde was labeled a “degenerate” in the 1930s. His work featured prominently in “Entartete Kunst,” an exhibition which traveled throughout Germany with the goal of educating the public about artists whose works had been rejected by the Nazi government. “Entartete Kunst” translates as “Degenerate Art.”
Emil Nolde
Sunflowers in the Windstorm
1943
Oil on board
II. Nolde’s Sunflowers in the Windstorm looks quite different from April Gornik’s Light Falling Through Trees, yet in these works both artists relied on an approach to style that is natural, that is, based on a detailed study of nature. In the case of Gornik’s work, nature is carefully re-imagined. In the case of Nolde’s work, nature is carefully remembered. In both the artists relied upon organic shapes to convey a sense of naturalism. Unlike geometric shapes, organic shapes bear the irregularities of nature.
While the Nazis prevented Nolde from painting professionally, he continued to paint privately in his home. For this work he could not paint sunflowers in the open air but through memory he was able to convey a sense of wind blowing the petals of the sunflowers. Further, these forms reflect the irregularities of nature; the sunflowers are not only different sizes, they are different colors. Beyond them, Nolde offers the intensity of a storm-filled sky in a credible range of blues, as well as a glimpse of the last moments of an orange-hued sunset on the horizon.
An examination of works produced over the length of Nolde’s career reveals that he did not always base his forms on detailed study of nature. But Sunflowers in the Windstorm was produced during an especially vulnerable time in his life, when he was concerned that any new work he produced may be discovered and confiscated or destroyed. His decision to paint an inoffensive subject in a relatively natural style suggests that such choices were rooted in large part on an understanding of the time and place in which he lived.
Pair 4
Analysis Exercises: Pair 4
Exercise 1: While April Gornik and Emil Nolde produced forms in a somewhat natural style, how is it clear that we are looking at art and not nature in each of these works?
Exercise 2: To what extent does April Gornik’s decision to work in black, white, and grey affect the naturalism of her work?
Exercise 3: To what extent does Emil Nolde’s decision to work in a painterly technique (in which he loaded his brush heavily with oil paint to create actual texture on the canvas) affect the naturalism of his work?
Pair 5: Two unidentified artists
Unidentified French manuscript illuminator
I. During the Middle Ages, a period in European history lasting approximately one thousand years following Classical antiquity, Catholic monks produced religious books for use within monasteries. The Ebbo Gospels is an account of the life of Christ, illustrated by monks at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Pierre d’Hautvillers in France. The work explored here is a page from this illuminated manuscript: a hand-produced and illustrated book. Monks who produced imagery in this context worked in specially designated studios in monasteries called scriptoria. The illustrations in The Ebbo Gospels were produced in ink and tempera on vellum (calf skin). These materials were produced by the monks themselves within the monasteries in which they resided.
Unidentified French manuscript illuminator
St. Matthew From The Ebbo Gospels
c. 816-841
Ink and tempera on vellum
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II. Associated with the reign of Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, the page from an illuminated manuscript discussed here depicts St. Matthew seated at a desk out of doors. A hill rises in the background, on which architectural structures are visible. In the upper right corner is a winged figure—an angel— which bears a scroll. The inclusion of the angel was likely included in this image to indicate that St. Matthew is writing a divinely inspired account.
Numerous scholars have written about the unusual style of the forms in The Ebbo Gospels. The style of the forms in this illuminated manuscript resulted from contact between monks in France and others who had been trained in Greece. Note that St. Matthew is wrapped in white drapery, similar to the manner in which ancient Greek artists typically represented religious figures.
A more detailed look at this image, especially St. Matthew’s hair and the hill in the background, indicates that the monk who produced it was working in an abstract style, that is, based on nature but significantly changing it. The organic forms on the hill are basic renderings of trees and plants but do have enough detail to be identified as specific trees or plants. St. Matthew’s hair appears to be long, thick, and curly but the manuscript illuminator creates waves in his hair which end in unified, sharp points. These stylistic decisions contribute to an overall effect of quick energy, communicating that the saint depicted here is recording with energy and speed the words spoken by the angel.
During the Middle Ages in Europe, a great deal of imagery was produced for use by the Catholic church. In this context, many artists turned to abstraction as a stylistic tendency, finding that an abstract approach to style enabled highly effective representation of subjects that had spiritual meaning.
Unidentified Roman sculptor
I. Antinous Mondragone is a large acrolith: a sculpture made of stone in combination with other materials. The surviving head of this work, now in the Louvre Museum, is made of marble originally inlaid with precious jewels and metals. The body of this figure was likely constructed of wood overlaid with metal, or other types of stone.
This sculpture was produced in the second century but was not discovered in the modern era until the eighteenth century. It was acquired by the influential Italian Borghese family and displayed at Villa Mondragone, giving this ancient sculpture its nickname.
Unidentified Roman sculptor
Antinous Mondragone
c. 130
Marble
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II. Antinous was the young lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. While Hadrian and his entourage were undertaking an official tour of the empire, Antinous drowned in the Nile. After Antinous’s death, Hadrian deified him. As such, this acrolith would have been placed in a temple.
As was the case with most representations of Greek and Roman gods, Antinous Mondragone is represented in an ideal style, that is, attempting to be more perfect than nature. This representation of Antinous does not betray the scars and irregularities found in nature itself, nor does it exhibit the exaggerations or reductions in form found in an abstract approach. Instead, Antinous is represented as ideal: forever young, forever at peace, and forever beautiful.
Pair 5
Analysis Exercises: Pair 5
Exercise 1: Many Catholic monks in France studied imagery produced in ancient Greece and Rome. In visual terms, what does the representation of St. Matthew have in common with Antinous Mondragone?
Exercise 2: During Classical antiquity representations of gods and goddesses were usually idealized. During the Middle Ages spiritual figures were usually abstracted. Which style do you think is more suitable for the representation of religious works, and why?
Exercise 3: St. Matthew is a small work on calf skin, a page in a book. The head of Antinous Mondragone is large, nearly one meter high. Does a work of art need to be large to be visually powerful?