Art History Final

Kaaterskill Falls
1826
Thomas Cole
(5.38)
Cole was english born
his work represents both familial i.d. w/ Mother England & USA's desire to discover art distinct to America
the cave acts as natural gothic arch to frame the natural scene of falls

St. John in the Wilderness
1827
Thomas Cole
(5.39)
visualizes words of St. Matts Gospel
Cole was devout protestant & freemason
cole roughly shaped this natural stone puplpit into the craggy profil of a face, staring downward into the valley below

The Oxbow
1836
Thomas Cole
vamplady101
(5.40)
American landscape was a holy text revealing God's word
Landscape forms expressed spiritual content of spoken & written forms
believed that the wilderness constituted a moral environment for meditating on the Hebraic origins of literature & visual arts

The Course of Empire: The Consummation
1835-36
Thomas Cole
(5.42)
feared the dangers of a rootless urban-industrial society

The Voyage of Life: Youth
1840
Thomas Cole
(5.44)
warning against follies of youth
boy doesn't notice end of river
he looks toward castle in sky vs. the path ahead of him
eastern design Castle is a freemason ideal: do not build the impossible or chase after it so that it might distract you from the present & reality

Kindred Spirits
1849
Asher B. Durand
(5.52)
uses themes of pastoral harmony, quiet, contemplative solitude in cooly shaded wilderness settings
death is not feared but welcomed
seamless progression toward a blissfull, heavenly afterlife, symbolized in kindred spirits
christian millenium was achievable through human agency & perfection
human progress toward perfection possible in America
scientific & technological progress goes hand in hand w/ moral & spiritual enlightenment

Niagara Falls
1857
Frederic Church
(5.61)
a painting that stirred nationalist feeling for America's Manifest Destiny
generated fear & anxiety, testing viewer's faith in God's orderly, benign universe.
forces viewer to confront power of the falls
perpetual rainbow over falls alludes to the rainbow after the floods in Genesis
panoramic view is all seeing perspective expanded past human eye

Heart of the Andes
1859
Frederic Church
(5.62)
imaginatively harmonized into one panoramic canvas a variety of geographical regions and meteorological phenomena
framed in wooden window as if to create a panoramic view from a window.
spectators given opera glasses to observe fine details
S. America seemed untapped area of new World, extension of USA ripe for economic development

Chapel of the Virgin at Subiaco
1830
Samuel F. Morse
(5.31)
emphasizes a road-side shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary
expresses the iconoclastic values of Puritan, Calvinist tradition & questioned the secretive, suspect rituals of Catholic image worship
in midst of Protestant revival, most expressed in Rochester, New York & boom towns along Erie Canal.

Uncle Tom and Little Eva
1853
Robert Duncanson
(5.63)
a singual exception to the artist's avoidance of the controversey of slaves
a clergyman & abolitionist commissioned the work.
represents scene from abolitionist work "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
Tom listens to Eva who talks about how all souls freed in afterlife
suggests that reconciliation of black & white liberation from slave labor may have to wait for another world spiritually superior to imperfect present
he was follower of spiritualist movement

Eel Spearing at Setauket
1845
William Sidney Mount
(5.2)
artist resisted travel abroad or using foreign pigments
painted for a lawyer, represents his childhood
Mount represented the aging female slave in the traditional pose of St. George, the dragon slayer of medieval legend
evoked artist's own experience w/ eel spearing w/ a slave
hunting eel taught him to distinguish fine colors of nature
placement of a slave at apex of composition violated typical hierarchical structure

Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap
1851-52
George Caleb Bingham
(5.50)
very popular painting representing Boone & his wife as if they were Mary & Joseph, Christ's holy family
represented a wilderness redeemed by religious symbolism
flanked by cross-like figures
a proposed mural for Capitol which was rejected

Jolly Flatboatmen
1846
George Caleb Bingham
(5.51)
painted for American-Art Union
stable, pyramidal composition orders the immoral behavior ordinarily generated middle and upper-class fears of social violence
illuminated by rising morning sun
a nostalgic memory of pre-industrial harmony

Boston Harbor at Sunset
1850-55
Fitz Hugh Lane
(5.58)
member of the Religious Union of Associationists
attempted to synthesize Spiritualist & socialist principles, creating heaven on earth
nostalgically celebrates Boston's seafaring history
view has more in common with the spiritual atmosphere of Mount Auburn Cemetary than with the activist ideology of westward expansionism & industrial modernization

Approaching Thunderstorm
1859
Martin Johnson Heade
(5.59)
strong horizontal, panoramic shape
possesses the meditative intimacy of a moment frozen in time, transforming ordinary life into an extraordinary, revelatory exp.
yet this pacific, mystical strain of Protestantism bears comparison w/ the self-reliant individualism of Transcendentalist thought
its notion of introspective communism w/ a universal divine presence
seem to speak in moral, religious tones
reinterprets voyage of life theme w/o rhetoric

Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way
1861-62
Emanuel Leutze
(5.71)
mural for the US Capitol in DC
harkens to Smibert's Bermuda Group
optimistically expressed biblical faith in America's devinely ordained civilizing mission
represented excited American pioneer as if they were the children of Israel about to enter the Promised Land
foreshadows the settlement of the West

The Greek Slave
marble sculpture
1843
Hiram Powers
(5.65)
symbolized the early 19th ct. Greek struggle for independence against Muslim Turks
wanted to gain sympathy for abolitionist movement by publicizing horrific tales of Infidels enslaving cauc.s
1 of many female nudes materializing his libidinal cross into manhood
manacled figure is charged w/ sadomasochistic overtones
attempted to clothe her w/ morality & chastity
attempts to deflect sexual gaze of captors w/ cross on hand

Forever Free
marble sculpture
1867
Edmonia Lewis,
(6.22)
features slave couple celebrating proclamation
expresses the restoration of the black family
w/ slavery abolished, men could protect their wives from sexual & physical exploitation, allowing them to be virtuous women
woman free of ethnic attributes so as not to make it autobiographical

A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
wet plate, albumen photograph from Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War [1863]
1865
Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan
(5.73)
metaphorically transforms the specific horror of battlefield into cycles of life
seeds of discord sown in previous decades are now being harvested by Death
corpses become ethereal
created ideological, aesthetic distance form the war's carnage
dealt damage to prestige of history painting

Veteran in a New Field
1865
Winslow Homer
(6.24)
finished few months after the Union's victory
soldiers military jacket & canteen set aside
expressed the post-war necessity for productive, economic renewal
wielding a scythe, evokes associations w/ Death/Grim Reaper
wheat were funerary symbols often placed on coffins before burial
mourns the martyrdom of nation's soldiers & president
awk. & roughness in painting became virtue, free from taint of foreign influence

Snap the Whip
1872
Winslow Homer
(6.26)
expressed hope & confidence in the nation's future
the line mimics the wartime struggle to hang together
as the war ended & soldiers return home to employment, so must boyhood ultimately give way to manly responsibilities of adulthood
dynamic composition pulls the viewer from isolated brotherhood toward renewal of family life
images of family life are popular during years immediately following civil war[

The Gross Clinic
1875
Thomas Eakins
often compared to Rembrant's Lesson of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp
depicts the modern advancement of medical practice for the direct benefit of patients
Gross' removal of a dead bone for the treatment of osteomyelitis, a bone disease, superseded the post practice of amputating entire limbs
Eakins signifies through geometry & light the preeminence of the professor's great intellect
response was largely revulsion to the gore

William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River
1876-77
Thomas Eakins,
(6.33)
forcefully addressed the issue of nude female models
pays homage to William Rush
the subject is not Rush, but the fleshy, nude model
Eakins represents Rush as the epitome of civic pride, artistic professionalism & moral respectability
the sculptor is absorbed at task at hand & chaperon is give no cause to focus on his behavior

Fourth of July in Centre Square, Philadelphia
1810-12
John L. Krimmel
(4.47)
represents a festive gathering of patriotic revelers commemorating Independence day in a public square, fronting Philadelphia's new water-pumping station.
Krimmel's socially diverse crowd seems focused upon the pleasures of drinking, socializing & displaying their own bodies
seems to warn against the pitfalls of luxury, intemperance & vanity
do Americans possess the moral will to channel political freedom rationally

Bacchante and Infant Faun
bronze sculpture
1893
Frederick MacMonnies
(6.34)
the female figure's unabashed nudity was less problematic than her high, exuberant grasp of a bunch of grapes, identifying her a a devotee of Bacchus, god of wine
presented huge issues with Temperance leagues and other puritanical organizations who believed that the nude form was lascivious to the naked eye in art

The Swimming Hole
1885
Thomas Eakins
(6.36)
composed from photographic studies of the artist & his male students
the outing became a self-conscious attempt to re-create the ancient Greek ideal of male beauty & camraderie
as US became more industrializied/urbanized, Eakins expressed yearning for simpler modes of living, closer to regenerative energies of nature
was rejected fearing homoerotic celebration of male figure

The Concert Singer
1890-92
Thomas Eakins
(6.37)
comemorates a performance of Weda Cook
a figure in a momentary, transient state
Eakins created a speaking, singing picture (hand & flowers--audience)
Eakin's portrait drew upon Americans' nationalistic identification with the ancient Hebrews, God's chosen people

Motion Study: Pole vaulting
1885
Thomas Eakins
(6.39)

Ironworkers’ Noontime
1880
Thomas Anshutz
(6.40)
represents a group of working-class men washing up, relaxing & posing outside an iron factory during heat of day
had difficulty selling it
represents strong & independent-looking workers
relaxed individuals
painting lacks any romantic nostalgia for an ideal world of pastoral harmony
was later pirated/copied by Corporate America for advertising Procter & Gamble
later this would reverse & soon artists would borrow images from ADs

The Banjo Lesson
1893
Henry Ossawa Tanner
(6.47)
seems to represent a conventional subject in its portrayal of an old black man teaching a barefoot boy how to play a musical instrument
theme of education
contradicted the racial stereotype that blacks were inherently musical
self cultivation & creative development as transmitted from one generation to next
worked from a photo in composition
a blurring atmosphere sug. spiritualized strand of American painting

The Daughters of Edward Boit
John Singer Sargent
1882-3
(6.52)
painted for a fellow expatriate artist
Sargent activated the space of the beholder & suggested the invisible presence of Edward Boit
attentive, obedient poses suggest they are returning the monitoring gaze of their father
Sargent alludes to a possible rebellion of the daughters
notion of sexual awakening/adolescence is further broached by bright red phallic-shaped screen
girls moves physically away from childhood to future wife etc.

Madame X
1883-84
John Singer Sargent
(6.53)
Virginie Gautreau, artist's cousin & American-born wife of wealthy french businessman
Sargent collaborated w/ subject to create frank & icily sexual image of professional beauty (gold diggers)
she presents herself as object of beauty
wears a crescent in hair, Diana, moon Goddess of the Hunt
both painter & subject denounced for collab. on immoral subjected painting

At the Opera (In the Loge)
1879
Mary Cassatt
(6.49)
represents a strong feminist p.o.v
woman is not beautiful seductress or passive ovject of voyeuristic pleasure
has her own independence
composed picture as a photo snapshot
integrated principle of seeing t

Reading 'Le Figaro'
1877-8
Mary Cassatt
(6.51)
traditionally in both US & EU art, reading women are usually represented w/ romance novels/fiction, never newspapers
the older woman is absorbed by her own intellectual activity & ignores out obtrusive gaze

The Boating Party
1893-4
Mary Cassatt
(6.50)
mother & oarsman exchange sexually charged glances
only child's innocent gaze defuses the sexual tension
extended arm seems sexually forward in the composition, tensed clenched fists further point to this

In the Studio
1880
William Merritt Chase
(6.68)
chase adopted the art-for-art's-sake credo of the Aesthetic movement though less abstract, he borrowed the color pallette of the impressionist movement
his studio is a place for the consumptioon of art rather than its messy production
studio w/ fashionably dressed female customer compares closely w/ contemporary department store displays
it served to commercialize art objects, making them into expensive commodities for anonymous market

After Sunset (Summer Evening)
1892
Thomas Dewing
(6.66)
represents two richly gowned women in an amorphous landscape of thinly painted blue-green tones
evokes the env. of Cornish, New Hampshire
sought to express its restorative cosmic energy as an antidote for the overwrought nerves of wealthy businessmen & art patrons

Washington Arch, Spring

1890

Childe Hassam

(6.70)

represents the monumental rach that marks the terminus of the avenue in Greenwich Village

brightly lit, sketchily painted scene is inhabited not only by horse-drawn carriages & well dressed society women, but by a street cleaner

worked in impressionist style but carefully avoided views of overcrowded urban environments & lower class subjects

Jonah
1885
Albert Pinkham Ryder
(6.62)
old testament story is overwhelmed by his gestural brushwork & visionary representation of oceanic fury
Jonah is immersed in swirling sea of paint, crying out
whale emerges about to swallow Jonah whole
identified art w/ spirituality
later developed a reputation for being a hermit-like loner
reworked work w/ sever layer of laquer which created dynamic light & dark contrasts

Dead Bird
1885
Albert Pinkham Ryder
(6.61)
strongly contrasts w/ the trompe-l'oeil still lifes of William Michael Harnett
modest image of a pale-yellow canary represents a poignant meditation on death
thinly painted on wood panel, the songbird's frail form is surrounded by a ghostly shroud
canary's half-opened beak underscores the tragic stilling of its voice
clearly sympathizes with life's vulnerable creatures

After the Hunt
1885
William Michael Harnett
(6.30)
appealed to NYC businessmen, many of whom fished & hunt @ expensive resorts & lodges in upstate NY
represented the literal & pictorial conquest of nature
contributed to the masculine atmosphere of Stewart saloon on Warren street in Lower Manhattan
hunting would've drawn parallels for businessmen hunting arch rivals & the predatory nature of capitalism

Moonlight and Indian Encampment
1885
Ralph A. Blakelock
(6.57)
expresses visionary subordination of narrative subject matter to a painterly, abstract style, emphasizing tonal values, or chiaroscuoro, to create introspective models
presence of native Americans, whom he clearly admired, merges with a religious, cosmic feeling of spiritual transcendence, symbolized by the pale glowing light of the moon
tonal style shared by many American landscapists rejecting provincial celebration Nat. tourist sites

The Last of the Buffalo
1889
Albert Bierstadt
(6.54)
was rejected for not representing trends in American art
attributes the decimation of American buffalo herds entirely to avaricious,warring Indians
this is untrue
USA encouraged slaughter of buffalo to deprive rebellious Native tribes of their food supply

Breaker Boys Working in Ewen Breaker, South Pittston, Pennsylvania
1911
Lewis Hine
(7.14)
utilized new portability of camera to capture stark scenes of urban blight, child labor & immigrant & working-class poverty
they seem embarked upon & trapped within a journey through life w/o hope
breakers were the mechanical plants for breaking up coal

The Spielers
1905
George Luks
(7.7)
two immigrant girls dance closely together in a dance known as 'spieling' called pivoting
popular among the working class around the turn of the century
cultural moralists were critical of spieling for its potential to stimulate sexual desire
defused this concern by depicting innocent, fun-loving girls rather than adults
blurred painterly style give the suggestion of motion (twirling)

Pennsylvania Excavation

1907-9

George Bellows

(7.5)

a dirty, wintry scene with sketchily painted workers & steam-driven digging machinery within a vast urban canyon

dense cluster of tall bldg.s accentuates the subterranean depths that dominate the picture

emphasizes the working-class, industrial nature of his subject w/ thick brushstrokes & a somber palette of grays, browns & off whites

Both Members of this Club
1909
George Bellows
(7.8)
startled audiences w/ raw, animal brutality of its muscular figures
places audience @ ringside amid a demonic, bloodthirsty group of fans
title alluded to the popular strategy for circumventing the law against public prizefighting
expressed the anxiety of America's white majority over its presumed racial superiority
conveys the inherent homoerotic & sadistic content of the sport, as the all-male audeince leers in delight @ the tormented physiques

Hairdresser’s Window
1907
John Sloan
(7.9)
public display of private grooming
frequently painted women cleaning, laundering & self grooming
these simple, daily cleansing rituals suggested the hopeful theme of social renewal & regeneration amid the filthy squalor of urban slums

Class War in Colorado
cover for The Masses
1914
John Sloan
(7.10)
dramatically imagines a scene from the "Ludlow Massacre" of April 1914 in which striking miners in Ludlow, Colorado, defended themselves against National Guard troops & the strikebreaking agents of the Rockfellers, the welathy NY family who owned Colorado Fuel & IRon Corp.

Self-Portrait with Palette and Brush
photograph
1902
Edward Steichen
(7.13)
used gauze over lense to create a painterly, blurred effect
this photograph he displays himself as an artist
the photographer can further alter the sharpness of the image in development

Spring Showers--New York
photograph
1900
Alfred Stieglitz
(7.16)
an atmospheric NYC street scene
Stieglitz was becoming an advocate of straight photography
style rejected the artificial manipulation of photographic images in favor of a sharper lens focus that underscored the inherent formal values found w/in nature or everyday modern life

The Steerage
1907
Alfred Stieglitz
(7.15)
shares the same type of subject matter as represented by HIne & the Ashcan School of painters
took the picture on the spur of the moment, while sailing to Europe on a fashionable new German Ocean liner found himself energized by this scene of migratory European workers who were returning home after temporary employment in USA

The Octopus, New York
1912
Alivin Langdon Coburn
(7.21)
taken from the top of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, a 700 ft, 50 story structure
Madison Sq.
with its pattern of radiating paths resembling the multi-armed sea creature
Coburn was most suited for the mechanical aspects of the camera, though others would argue that the painterly eye is more sensitive than the camera lens

Nature Symbolized No. 2
1911
Arthur Dove
(7.31)
simplification of nature to the rhythmic, harmonic essentials of color & form
compared to the labor movement's intense struggle to reject socioeconomic hierarchies & achieve independence & self control
connection between modernist revolt against academic art & the working class's rebellion against the capitalist system of wage labor & factory discinpline
both opposed to status quo, aspired to transcend the limitations of soc. relation

City Night
1926
Georgia O’Keefe
(7.27)
draws our gaze downward and inward as well as upward
canyon-like space between the towering architectural forms successfully competes for our attention, thanks to the light of a full moon, traditional feminine symbol
bring the modern city down to nature & another androgynous marriage of male & female forms, signifying hermetic unifying harmonies of creative act

Battle of Lights, Coney Island
Mardi Gras
1913-13
Joseph Stella
(7.28)
represents the hedonistic, carnivalesque frenzy created by dizzying rides, popular games, side shows, colorful electrical lights & exotic, decorative architecture
attempting to revitalize high art, he created a kaleidoscopic painting that implicitly endorsed commercialized mass culture's rejection of the refined, genteel tradition in favor of irrational, bodily pleasures
modernists hoped to liberate imagination w/ new forms

Portrait of a German Officer
1914
Marsden Hartley
(7.34)
memorializes his friend & lover Karl von Freyburg who was killed early in WWI
evokes his friend's spirtual presence w/ a funeral shroud of colorful flags, badges & military paraphernalia, set against a melancholic black b.g.
declared his love for Freyburg in a private code of letters, numbers & signs & then only after his friend's death

Nude Descending the Staircase
1912
Marcel Duchamp
(7.29)
compared to the visual multiplication of the human form as recorded in motion photgraphy, a realist medium
like motion photography, his montage parallels the pictorial flux of cinerma, a new medium admired by Modernist artists
equivocation between Cubism & anarchism due to the lack of discipline & chaos

Here, this is Stieglitz (Ici, C'est ici Stieglitz)

1915
Francis Picabia
(7.39)
presents Stieglitz a the mechanistic synthesis of a camera & automobile
anti-aesthetic, engineering-style design of the drawing subverts the old-fashioned notion of the 'ideal' as weritten nostalgically in German script at the top of the picture
the phallic camera signifies S.'s loss of creative energy

Fountain, found object (original lost)
1917
Marcel Duchamp
(7.38)
white porcelain urinal bearing the ironic title fountain
signed R. Mutt
was barred from showing
said to be immoral, vulgar & plagiarism

Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy
1924
Man Ray
(7.40)
Duchamp's eccentric, notorious adopted persona whose name became connected with a number of enigmatic readymades
publicized the birth of this female alter ego by photographing Duchamp wearing fashionable women's clothing and make-up

Incense of a New Church
1921
Charles Demuth
(7.47)
chose title to represent the stylized smokestacks & swirls of polluting smoke from a nearby industrial complex
suggestion of precious, stained-glass church window clearly idealized the subject
artist encourages beholders to imagine the smokestacks as the pipes for a monumental organ, while the industrial plumes of smoke curve about in seductive serpentine lines that induce an other worldly state of reverie

The Figure 5 in Gold
1928
Charles Demuth
(7.48)
pays tribute to the American poet William Carlos Williams, one of Demuth's closest friends
painting visually interprets Williams's minimalist poem "The Great Figure"
the intensity & physical movement of this spare poetic expression of NYC street life by utilizing the fractured, rhythmic geometry of Cubism & Futurism , in conjunction w/ 2-D, typographical precision of urban signs & numbers

Classical Landscape
1931
Charles Sheeler
(7.62)
admired Duchamp's detached, unemotional & mechanical images
Ford Motor Company's River Rouge Plant
the plant's buildings were connected by miles of railroad tracks, conveyer belts & roads to create a giant assembly chain

Home, Sweet Home
1931
Charles Sheeler
(7.63)
a partial interior view of his South Salem, New York, home, near the Connecticut state border
Sheeler sought to deomstrate that streamlined, machine-age forms were rooted in the anonymously crafted artifacts of the nation's pre-industrial material culture
focused upon the crisp, rectilinear forms of the room's antique American furnishings

Criss-Crossed Conveyors: Ford Plant
1927
Charles Sheeler
(7.61)
Ford's new River Rouge Plant was an American Mecca or holy site
behind the criss-crossing coke & cole conveyors, 8 enormous smokestacks from 1 of the plant's powerhouses loom overhead.
Sheller's composition, with its low viewpoint, is meant to instill feelings of reverential awe before this sublime image of godlike industrial power

American Gothic
1930
Grant Wood
(7.70)
most famous picture of Midwestern Regionalism
the painting's representation of sturdy individualism, religious piety & rural labor was also reassuring for a nation experiencing numerous farm foreclosures, bank failures & a sharp decline in economic production
painting nostalgically depicts 1800s Iowans, who may be imagined as the original occupants of the house

Southern Pacific Railroad Billboard near Los Angeles, California
photograph for the U.S. Farm Security Administration
1937
Dorothea Lange
(7.71)
a pair of migrant workers walking down the middle of a dusty CA road
contradicts corporate ADs images of upper/middle class affluence, ignoring the realities of the Depression
willful blindness toward the hardships of the unemployed & working poor

Allie Mae Burroughs
photograph for the U.S. Farm Security Administration
1936
Walker Evans
(7.72)
traveled the Deep South where he poignantly documented the lives of impoverished sharecroppers or tenant farmers.
dignified, yet unsettling, close-up portrait of Allie M. Burroughs
accentuates her vulnerability to our probing, privileged gaze

Construction of a Dam
1938-39 mural for the Department of the Interior

Washington, D.C.

William Gropper

(7.75)
Gropper was politically active artist
large-scale murals of American labor under the auspices of the Treasury Section
inspired by various dam projects sponsored by the government agency during the Great Depression, including the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River
celebrates the workers' daring gravity-defying bravery & collective solidarity

print
cover for Opportunity

February, 1926
Aaron Douglas
(7.55)

Aspects of Negro Life: Song of the Towers,
Federal Arts Project painting for Harlem

1934
Aaron Douglas,

branch of the New York Public Library
(7.78)
muralist
social realism also could encompass a more Modernist, abstract vocabulary of forms
painted after the optimistic height of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s, Douglas's Depression-era Public Library
expressed new cultural pessimism caused by mass unemployment & poverty

Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors—7^th Avenue Style
1940
Stuart Davis
(7.81)
regarded Social Realism as a backward, propagandistic style that failed to express the modern reality of change & motion
an implicitly political painting
combines from two different art traditions, still life & landscape painting.
draws upon Cubist tradition of overlapping geometric forms to replicate in paint the colorful hot rhythms & improvisational riffs of US jazz

Migration of the Negro, Panel 50
1940
Jacob Lawrence
(8.4)
Industrialists employed African-Americans as low-wage strikebreakers
this contributed to white workers' resentments & triggered deadly anti-black race riots
this panel depicts this

American Gothic (Ella Watson), Washington, D.C

photograph for the U.S. Farm Security Administration

1942

Gordon Parks

(8.5)
the black charwoman seems oppressively confined in her pictorial space
the descending stars & stripes, hanging against a blank, institutional wall, appear to mimic prison bars in the grim, b&w photo

Nighthawks
1942
Edward Hopper
(8.12)
represents a desolate city street corner, powerfully expressed the nation's darkened mood.
anticipates the ominous lighting, urban set designs & predatory, fatalistic themes of many film noir movies
though neighborhood seems seedy & derelict, the large plate-glass windows of the all-night diner signify the sleek geometry & transparency of modern architecture
disturbing vision of an impersonal, alienated urban culture

The Subway
1950
George Tooker
(8.13)
Surrealism new type of aesthetic made famous by Dali
Dreams and nightmares
Image of a New York subway
Labyrinthy
Haunted looking figures
Sinister warring overcoats
Loss of individual identity
You cannot escape
Hallucinogenic hyperrealism
New forms of abstract art

The Liver is the Cock's Comb
1944
Arshile Gorky
(8.19)
bridged the gap between Surrealism & abstract Expressionism
armenian-born painter abandoned the geometric abstraction of Cubism for abstract organic shapes expressing sexual desires & childhood memories
an armenian spirit guided his hand to paint it
the fecund shapes further suggest male & female genitalia & the key organ of the liver, which, in ancient & medieval legends, was the repository of all human passions

Guardians of the Secret
1943
Jackson Pollock
(8.21)
works w/ animalistic, ritualistic symbols & the energetic, spontaneous release of unconscious impulses
cubist geometry overlaid w/ hieroglyphic scrawls & roughly painted, gestural forms
influenced by an 1894 photograph of Native American guardians of a secret knife society, the painting's mysterious figures include a bright red rooster sitting atop the guarded central rectangle, w/ a dog lying below
energy is exp. alt. to rationalist societ

Autumn Rhythm
1950
Jackson Pollock
(see Pollock’s similar painting, Lavender Mist, 1950, fig. 8.23)
ccollapsing any objective distance from nature
he was nature
he impressed numerous hand-prints into the wet pigment toward the top edge of the painting
active participation in dynamic forces
artist' s creative dialogue w/ paints & craft materials

Jackson Pollock at Work
1951
Hans Namuth
(8.24; see also Hills, 4.3-4.4)
"action painting" to characterize the work of Pollock & other Abstract Expressionists, who conceived the canvas as "an arena in which to act--rather than as a spacei n which to reproduce, re-design, analyze, or express an object, actual or imagined"
the creative act is inserpareable from their own biographies or life experiences

Thomas Cole

English born
Father is a failed textile manufacturer
worked on coloring prints & fabrics as a young boy
joined Masonic lodge in 1822
Nature was a kind of creation of the Divine architect influence of Free Masonry
paintings were bought by Rich, Prominent NY socialities, including John Trumbull

Church Background & Aesthetic

New England-born but had career in NYC as a disciple of Thomas Cole
Durand & Church represent two main figures in continuing Cole tradition
Durand= naturalistic VS. Church = sublime, transcendental, dramatic, continues high drama of Cole
Presbyterian protestant from Calvinist background, more Christian than Durand, but interested in science too
saw self like a Da Vinci, someone who put art to scientific use

Pollock Aesthetic & Background

Carl Jung is a major influence, Jung looked at the unconscious in relation to art
Indexical sign vs. iconic
Iconic- likeness
Footprint is indexical, record of identity
He would imprint himself onto the painting as a record of his identity making his art indexical

Dada or Dadadism

a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I & peaked from 1916 to 1922.
primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design & concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works.
purpose was to ridicule the meaninglessness of the modern world
anti war, anti-bourgeois & anarchistic

Aestheticism

a 19th century European movement that emphasized aesthetic values over moral or social themes in literature, fine art, the decorative arts, & interior design.
Generally speaking, it represents the same tendencies that symbolism or decadence stood for in France, or decadentismo stood for in Italy, & may be considered the British branch of the same movement.
belongs to the anti-Victorian reaction & had post-Romantic roots, & as such anticipates modernism.
ended w/ trial of Wilde

Cubism

a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso & Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting& sculpture,& inspired related movements in music & literature.
The first branch of cubism, known as Analytic Cubism, was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between 1907 and 1911 in France.

Art History Final

Art History 1071 with Bjelajac at George Washington University - Foggy Bottom Campus

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