analysis

ARTS 1A

Topic 1: Landscape

Topic 1

First, watch the following short video, “Sunset at Montmajour: A New Discovery”:

https://youtu.be/4bwyoSontEg

This video is narrated in Dutch, with English subtitles.

Turn off the closed captioning feature, since this video is already subtitled.

Pair 1: Vincent van Gogh and Jiang Shijie

Vincent van Gogh

I. Several factors are used to determine the authorship of a work of art. When scholars at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam learned of a painting that had possibly been made by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh but which had been out of public sight for several decades, they studied Sunset at Montmajour for two years to determine if it was really painted by van Gogh.

To authenticate the painting, museum professionals visited the site represented in the painting, which they recognized as a place that van Gogh had painted. They also compared the painting technique of this work of art to other known paintings by van Gogh and found its brushwork similar. Further, they found that the layers of oil paint were mixed together, indicating that the artist had painted the entire work in one session. Van Gogh was known to have worked that way. They analyzed the paint itself and identified the exact chemical properties of cobalt blue and red lake that existed in other paintings by the artist.

Museum professionals also established a provenance: a record of ownership of a work of art. They documented the provenance in two ways. First, van Gogh himself described this painting in a letter dated July 5, 1888. Second, they found that this painting was listed in an inventory which had been made of van Gogh’s works after his death.

All of these factors indicated to scholars that this is indeed a painting by van Gogh. One final factor sealed their understanding of its authorship: they found that, on a purely visual level, Sunset at Montmajour held their visual attention similar to the way that other known works by this artist held their visual attention.

Vincent van Gogh

Sunset at Montmajour

1888

Oil on canvas

II. Van Gogh intended for viewers to feel something when observing this painting. He was one of the first artists in history who wrote about his desire for people to feel emotion when looking at works of art he created. He is one of several artists in history to use a distinctive painting technique art historians call impasto: the process of applying paint thickly on the surface. Van Gogh was one of the first artists to use this technique to guide viewers to feel emotion when looking at his art. His choice of colors and subject were additional factors he considered as he directed people to feel emotion when looking at his art. What do you think the artist wanted you to feel when looking at this painting?

Jiang Shijie

I. Chinese artist Jiang Shijie carefully recorded what he felt when he created his album, “The Three Perfections.” In the poem next to one of the images, the artist described the sadness he felt about the passing of the Ming dynasty; of having to leave a friend; and of returning home one evening after a drinking party. But while Vincent van Gogh made art to connect with viewers, Jiang Shijie was primarily painting for personal development, the goal of China’s literati painters: scholar painters who were primarily interested in making art “to satisfy the heart”.

Jiang Shijie

Untitled (Landscape and Poems) From “The Three Perfections”

Late 1600s

Ink on paper

II. Jiang used a narrower range of colors than Vincent van Gogh, but he was an expert in the manipulation of line. Look carefully at an untitled work from the album, which depicts a mountain, trees, rocks, birds, and a small building. Follow with your eyes some of the actual lines: physical, extended points that have both length and width. Some lines are short and delicate (the birds and the leaves) while others are wide and lengthy (the rocks and tree trunks). Jiang made art not to sell but so that he would have a satisfying life.

Pair 1

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Analysis Exercises: Pair 1

Exercise 1: How did both artists use their art tools and materials to assist viewers in feeling something—or to feel something themselves—when looking at these works of art?

Exercise 2: In what ways are these works are of so different that you would never mistake the painting by Vincent van Gogh as the work of Jiang Shijie, and vice versa?

Exercise 3: Vincent van Gogh often signed his paintings, but this painting he did not sign. Why did you think he did not sign this painting? Compare it with Jiang’s work as you speculate about why Vincent van Gogh may have chosen to omit his name from this painting.

Pair 2: Joachim Patinir and Caspar David Friedrich

Joachim Patinir

I. Flemish artist Joachim Patinir was the first artist in European history to be called a landscape artist. While his Landscape with Saint Jerome includes a representation of a religious person, and while it was made for Catholic viewers to aid in prayer, Patinir gave careful attention to the representation of trees, mountains, grass, sky, and rocks. Even though Patinir’s painting recalls the life of a Christian saint, is tempting to categorize Patinir’s work as landscape: a subject category in which the environment is the most important aspect of the work of art.

Joachim Patinir

Landscape with Saint Jerome

1516-1517

Oil on wood

II. Patinir’s goal was not to explore the environment for its own sake but, rather, to help people of faith experience devotion. Patinir would not have made this painting if it were not for the inclusion of St. Jerome, a subject of greater interest to the Catholic buyers of his paintings in the sixteenth century than the representation of the environment. Still, he clearly wanted viewers to take time to experience the painted landscape. He made attempts to convey the illusion of a recession of space. Not only did his viewers see a difference in size from objects nearby to objects in the distance, but he achieved the illusion of space by using aerial perspective: a way to suggest distance by showing how objects far away appear to lose their color.

Caspar David Friedrich

I. The German artist Caspar David Friedrich also had patrons who used art to experience devotion, but this artist pushed his patrons to experience intellectual insight, as well. Patrons: the clients, customers, or buyers of works of art, acquire art for a wide range of reasons, but those who purchased art by Patinir and Friedrich often did so for explicitly religious reasons, either as an aid to prayer (in the case of Patinir) or to stimulate religious ideas (in the case of Friedrich).

Friedrich’s Monk at the Sea was purchased by a devout Protestant, the King of Prussia, Frederick Wilhelm III. The painting does not glorify any person or nation but rather positions a man who has taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in relation to an expansive and impressive universe over which he holds no power. King Frederick did not commission this work but purchased it after it was completed. Did he use it to remind himself that he, too, was powerless in the eyes of God?

Caspar David Friedrich

Monk at the Sea

1808-1810

Oil on canvas

II. Unlike Patinir, who relied on objects of interest and a strong use of aerial perspective to guide viewers’ attention through Landscape with Saint Jerome, Friedrich divided his composition into three horizontal bands. The lines caused by the intersecting edges of each band—sky to sea, sea to land—stretch across the painting to both sides, leading our eyes to the margins of the picture plane instead of deeper into it. These lines which direct the eye but are not actual lines are called leading lines.

The leading lines created by Caspar David Friedrich in Monk at the Sea help us understand the importance of the element of line to artists. When you read our primary source document this week, written by Vincent van Gogh, look for a comment he made as he stood looking at the landscape near Montmajour: “all the lines were beautiful.”

Pair 2

Analysis Exercises: Pair 2

Exercise 1: In what ways does the relative size of the human figures in each painting help us understand what was important for the artists to communicate each of these works?

Exercise 2: Which of these paintings do you feel conveys a greater sense of space, and why?

Exercise 3: As a Protestant artist, Friedrich may have been trying to produce landscape imagery that looked quite different from traditional Catholic landscape painting. In what ways did he succeed in conceiving a different approach to landscape?

Pair 3: Rembrandt van Rijn and Yishay Garbasz

Rembrandt van Rijn

I. By the seventeenth century, landscape imagery had become popular for its own sake, and artists were able to construct and sell landscape imagery that did not contain religious figures. One of the most popular landscape artists in Europe during the seventeenth century was the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn, who provided viewers with enough details of the local environment that some sites were recognizable.

Rembrandt mass produced his designs with a printmaking technique called etching: a way of making prints from a metal plate, usually copper, into which the design is incised with acid. Artists who worked with the etching technique in the seventeenth century could produce from 75 to 100 prints from a single copper plate, hence selling a design not once but up to 100 times.

An accomplished printmaker, Rembrandt used an approach to line called cross-hatching. With cross-hatching, an artist achieves a sense of shading with intersecting sets of parallel lines.

Rembrandt van Rijn

The Three Trees

1643

Etching and drypoint

II. Even though there are no figures who may be identified specifically as “religious” in The Three Trees, this etching likely held symbolic significance for viewers. Most of Rembrandt’s patrons were strict Protestants, and some would have seen the reference to three trees as a reminder of the crucifixion of Christ, who was executed between thieves on either side. While many Dutch buyers of such prints were religious, most preferred to buy works of art which encouraged contemplation of spiritual matters through symbolism instead of obvious religious subjects.

Yishay Garbasz

I. Like Rembrandt, contemporary Israeli artist Yishay Garbasz mass produces landscape imagery to convey ideas. In the photograph Christianstadt, the artist presents an image of a ruin: the remnants of a building or monument which has been destroyed or has disintegrated. Constructed for her book In My Mother’s Footsteps, Christianstadt represents one of the sites the artist contemplated as she visited camps at which her mother was incarcerated during the Holocaust.

Yishay Garbasz

Christianstadt From In My Mother’s Footsteps

2005

C-print

II. More than most landscape artists, Yishay Garbasz engages her own body in the pursuit of landscape imagery. To produce the book In My Mother’s Footsteps, the artist underwent physical difficulty as she visited and photographed places associated with her mother’s suffering, often walking long distances to reach them. Yishay Garbasz’s work is tied to the practice of confronting traumatic memories: memories with the potential to cause long- term problems, resulting from an experience of violence. Moreover, she has used her own body as the subject of her art, photographing herself over a period of months when undergoing sex reassignment surgery.

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Analysis Exercises: Pair 3

Exercise 1: Who might have purchased landscape prints by Rembrandt in the seventeenth century, and who is likely to purchase landscape prints by Yishay Garbasz today?

Exercise 2: What objects in each landscape might viewers find to be symbolic?

Exercise 3: What evidence do you find in each landscape that the sites are real rather than imagined?

Pair 4: Jørn Utzon and Kunlé Adeyemi

Jørn Utzon

I. Architecture, like works of art, can have close ties to subject categories. Danish architect Jørn Utzon won the opportunity to design the Sydney Opera House through a competition. His design evokes the sails of boats on the harbor near which the opera house sits. When Utzon submitted his design, he was not completely sure how the design could be achieved in physical form, and he worked within a process he called additive architecture to build it. Utzon defined additive architecture as an architectural practice that develops on the basis of growth patterns in both culture and nature.

Jørn Utzon

Sydney Opera House Sydney, Australia

1957-1973

Concrete and pink granite

II. To complete his design, Utzon worked with precast concrete: a construction material made by casting liquid concrete in molds which are then transported to a site to be used in the construction of buildings. In doing so, you might say that Utzon worked similar to a sculptor, building an form that evoked sailing ships while producing a building that had a practical function: an opera house.

Kunlé Adeyemi

I. Unlike Utzon’s design for the Sydney Opera House, Kunlé Adeyemi’s design for a floating school was not meant to be permanent. This Nigerian architect practices an approach to architecture called sustainable architecture: an architectural practice that seeks to minimize damage to the environment. For this project, Adeyemi considered building materials that were readily available so as not to demand an unnecessary toll upon the environment. Also, the materials could be reused or recycled at a later time. The Makoko Floating School in Lagos served the children who studied there for less than five years. But it is a design that can be repeated as often as needed.

Kunlé Adeyemi

Makoko Floating School Lagos, Nigeria

2013-2016

Bamboo, wood, and plastic barrels

II. Adeyemi’s design for a floating school emerged from his understanding of the environmental conditions of the urban environment of Lagos. Adeyemi’s sensitivity to the environment demonstrates his understanding of urbanism: the study of the physical needs of an urban society, especially how humans interact with built environments.

Pair 4

Analysis Exercises: Pair 4

Exercise 1: In what ways are these buidings by Utzon and Adeyami tied to the subject category of landscape?

Exercise 2: How did each architect use the element of line to create a dynamic visual experience for viewers of these buildings?

Exercise 3: How it is clear to you from observing these buildings that both architects had to be experts in different building materials in order to realize their designs?

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