2 papers Art history visual analysis (5-7 pages)

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ART HISTORY 132

Symbolism

Symbolism
(c. 1865-1915)

  • term: applied to both visual & literary arts (e.g., Rimbaud)

  • aim: not to see things, but to see through them to significance & reality far deeper

  • definition: subjective interpretation
  • reject observation of optical world
  • fantasy forms based on imagination
  • color, line, & shapes used as symbols of personal emotions, rather than to conform to optical image

  • function: artist as visionary
  • to achieve seer’s insight, artists must become deranged
  • systematically unhinge & confuse everyday faculties of sense and reason

  • themes: religion, mythology, sexual desire (vs. Baudelairian everyday life)

Odilon Redon
(1840-1916)

  • biography: born to a prosperous family

training: failed entrance exams at École des Beaux-Arts

  • briefly studied under Gérôme (1864)
  • career: interrupted by Franco-Prussian War
  • remained relatively unknown until cult novel by Huysmans titled Against Nature (1884 )
  • story featured decadent aristocrat who collected Redon's drawings
  • media:
  • early work  charcoal & lithography
  • later work  oils
  • aim: “… [to bring] to life, in a human way, improbable beings and making them live according to the laws of probability, by putting – as far as possible – the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible”
  • subject matter: “fantastic”
  • influenced by writings of Edgar Allen Poe
  • strange amoeboid creatures, insects, plants w/ human heads, etc.
  • themes:
  • “fantastic” creatures
  • mythological scenes

(Left) Redon’s Symbolist Eye Balloon (1878)
and
(right) Crying Spider (1881)

Redon’s Symbolist Eye Balloon (1878)
vs.
Daumier’s Nadar (c. 1860)

Redon

  • Cyclops (1898)
  • subject: mythological
  • Polyphemus & Galatea
  • narrative  loving moment vs. jealously
  • theme: psychological
  • conscious vs. unconscious
  • waking vs. sleeping
  • tone: haunting
  • brushwork: painterly (Impressionist)
  • composition: dynamic
  • color: vibrant
  • whimsical
  • harmonious
  • perspective: aerial

Redon’s Symbolist Cyclops (c. 1900)
vs.
Carracci’s Italian Baroque Polyphemus in the Farnese Gallery (c. 1600)

Henri Rousseau
(1844-1910)

  • biography:
  • served in French army
  • bureaucrat in Paris Customs Office (1871-1893)
  • took up painting as a hobby
  • accepted early retirement in 1893 to devote himself to art

  • career: suffered ridicule & endured poverty

  • aesthetic: “naïve”

  • themes: jungle scenes

  • sources:
  • claimed inspiration from his military experiences in Mexico
  • in fact, sources were illustrated books & visits to zoo/botanical gardens in Paris

Rousseau’s Sleeping Gypsy
(1897)

Rousseau’s The Dream
(1910)

James Ensor
(1860-1949)

  • nationality: Belgian

  • personal crisis:
  • family forbade him to marry
  • plunged to depths of despair
  • returned to painting religious subjects
  • sold contents of his studio in 1890s

  • aesthetic: avant-garde
  • Les XX (the Twenty)
  • goal to promote new artistic developments throughout Europe
  • group’s leader/founder
  • treated harshly by art critics
  • disbanded after a decade
  • challenged rules of perspective
  • free use of color and space and brushwork to enhance the psychological impact

  • mood: macabre
  • people shown wearing masks that cannot be distinguished from their true faces

Ensor’s Christ Entering the City of Brussels in 1889
(1888)

(Left) Ensor’s Christ Entering the City of Brussels in 1889 (1888)
vs.
(right) Tintoretto’s Mannerist Last Judgment (c. 1575)

Edvard Munch
(1863-1944)

  • nationality: Norwegian
  • biography:
  • damaged by childhood and family tragedy
  • mother dies at age of five (5)
  • favorite sister dies at age fifteen (15)
  • obsessed by sickness, insanity and death
  • mid-age crisis:
  • age 45, profound depression
  • spent eight months in sanatorium in Denmark
  • aim: to describe “modern psychic life”
  • powerlessness over love & death
  • emotional states of jealousy, loneliness, fear, desire, & despair
  • aesthetic: abstract
  • spent several years in FR & Germany
  • influenced by Post-Impressionists
  • color, line & figural distortions

Munch

  • Puberty (1894-95)
  • theme: ages of life
  • subject: biographical (?)
  • death of sister
  • figure: naturalistic
  • pose: iconic frontality
  • composition: stable
  • color: muted
  • light/shadow:
  • evenly distributed
  • symbolic

Munch

  • Madonna (1894)
  • theme: biblical
  • subject: biographical
  • death of mother
  • erotic, pre-Freudian wish fulfillment (?)
  • figure: idealized/sexualized forms
  • pose: Classical sensuousness
  • composition: stable
  • enlivened by
  • Classically arranged upraised elbow
  • tilted head
  • color: muted w/ primary accents
  • light/shadow: evenly distributed

Munch

  • The Scream (1893)
  • original title: Despair
  • epigraph: “I stopped and leaned against the balustrade, almost dead w/ fatigue. Above the blue-black fjord hung the clouds, red as blood and tongues of fire. My friends had left me, and alone, trembling w/ anguish, I became aware of the vast, infinite cry of nature”
  • subject: mental anguish
  • brushwork: impasto
  • figure: abstract distortion of form
  • facial features/gestures: expressionistic
  • composition: synthetic dynamism
  • color: vibrant compliments vs. muted
  • light/shadow: assumed by role of color
  • perspective: linear & aerial

(Left) Detail from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment (c. 1535)
vs.
(right) Munch The Scream (1893)

Gustav Klimt
(1862-1918)

  • ethnicity: Austrian (Vienna)
  • significance: Vienna Secession (1897)
  • motto: “To every age its art and to art its freedom"
  • reaction to chokehold of Academy
  • aimed to bring more abstract and purer forms to designs
  • target of violent criticism
  • images sometimes displayed behind screen to avoid corrupting youths’ sensibilities
  • Klimt w/drew eight years later
  • themes: (sexual) desire and anxiety
  • aesthetic: decorative
  • luxurious forms/figures
  • flattened spatial order
  • sumptuous surfaces/tracery
  • vivid juxtaposition of colors
  • gold background

Klimt’s The Kiss
(1907-08)

(Left) full image of Klimt’s The Kiss (1907-08);
and
(right) detail of upper torsos and faces

IMAGE INDEX

  • Slide 2: MOREAU, Gustave. The Apparition (1874-1876), Oil on canvas, 3’ 5’ ¾” x 2’ 4 1/2 “, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
  • Slide 3: REDON, Odilon. Self Portrait (1880), Oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
  • Slide 4: REDON. (Left) Eye-Balloon (1878), Charcoal, 42.2 x 33.2 cm., The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; and (right) The Crying Spider (1881), Charcoal, 49.5 x 37.5 cm., Private collection, The Netherlands.
  • Slide 5: (Left) Redon’s Symbolist Eye Balloon (c. 1895); and (right) Daumier’s Nadar (c. 1860).
  • Slide 6: REDON. The Cyclops (c. 1914), Oil on canvas, 64 x 51 cm., Museum Kroller-Mueller, Otterlo, The Netherlands.
  • Slide 7: (Left) REDON’s Symbolist Cyclops (c. 1895); and (right) CARRACCI’s Italian Baroque (c. 1600) Polyphemus and Ariadne (c. 1600).

IMAGE INDEX

  • Slide 8: ROUSSEAU. Myself, Portrait-Landscape (1890), Oil on canvas, 56 1/4 x 43 1/4 in., National Gallery, Prague.
  • Slide 9: ROUSSEAU. The Sleeping Gypsy (1897), Oil on canvas, 4’3" x 6'7"; The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
  • Slide 10: ROUSSEAU. The Dream (1910), Oil on canvas, 6' 8 1/2" x 9' 9 1/2“, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
  • Slide 11: ENSOR. Self Portrait.
  • Slide 12: ENSOR. Christ’s Entry into Brussels (1889), Oil on canvas, 99 1/2 x 169 1/2 in. 5/ 8 in., J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
  • Slide 13: (Left) Ensor’s Christ Entering the City of Brussels in 1889 (1888); and (right) Tintoretto’s Mannerist Last Judgment (c. 1575)
  • Slide 14: MUNCH. Self-Portrait with Burning Cigarette (1895), Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 85.5 cm., National Gallery, Oslo.


IMAGE INDEX

  • Slide 15: MUNCH. Puberty (c. 1895), Oil on canvas, 59 5/8 x 43 1/4 in., Nasjonalgalleriet (National Gallery), Oslo, Norway.
  • Slide 16: MUNCH. Madonna (1895), Oil on canvas, 91 x 70.5 cm., National Gallery, Oslo, Norway.
  • Slide 17: MUNCH. The Scream (c. 1895), Casein/waxed crayon and tempera on cardboard, 35 7/8 x 29 in., Nasjonalgalleriet (National Gallery), Oslo.
  • Slide 18: (Left) Detail from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment (c. 1535); and (right) Munch The Scream (1893)
  • Slide 19: Photograph of Gustav KLIMT.
  • Slide 20: KLIMT. The Kiss (1907-08), Oil and gold on canvas, 5’10 ¾” x 5’10 ¾”, Osterreichische Galerie, Vienna.
  • Slide 21: (Left) Full image of Klimt’s The Kiss (1907); and (right) detail of upper torsos and faces.