FINAL
Part I - Comparisons.
You will have five to seven minutes per comparison. There will be
four or five comparisons taken from art we have seen from the beginning
of the course. I will expect you to know the
relative chronology of the two images, but will not require exact dates.
For example you should know that Picasso was painting after Manet.
Select in your mind representative examples from the
following movements: Neo-Classicism, Romanticism (France, Germany,
England, United States), Realism (France, England, U.S. and carry the movement
in the U.S. through American Scene Painting in the 1930's.), Impressionism,
Post-Impressionism, Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau/Jugendstil, Fauves, Cubism
(Analytic and Synthetic), Orphism, Suprematism, Constructivism, Futurism, de
Stijl, Bauhaus, German Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism
(both gesture painting and color field painting), Neo-Dada or Pop, Photorealism
or Superrealism, Minimalism, Environmental or Earth Art, Conceptual Art,
Performance Art, Issue Art (feminism, ethnic identity, globalization,
etc.) Notice how diverse and confusing things become after 1960. Is
this because culture in general has become more diverse or because we lack
historical distance from the material (or both)?
When studying for comparisons ask
yourself:
-
What period and movement was the artist
part of?
-
Describe the style of the work (formal
analysis - line, color, light and shade, perspective?, etc.)
-
What is the subject of the work?
-
What is its relationship to other similar
objects from the same time, earlier, later?
-
Think about new art forms that have
developed in the last 150 years: the rise of printmaking as a medium
for fine artists (Daumier, Kolowitz, Warhol), collage, frottage, constructions,
performance art, happenings (DADA and 1960's), readymades, moving sculpture,
assemblage, soft sculpture, installations.
-
Above all, understand what is meant by "pictorial illusionism."
Be clear when it was the principal goal of artists and what devices (like perspective) they used to achieve it. When and under what
circumstances did pictorial illusionism cease to be the primary goal of
artists? Did it happen all over at the same time? This kind of question
should take you from Courbet's "The Artist in his Studio" to the first
non-objective abstractions of Kandinsky, Delaunay, and Malevich in the
early 20th century and beyond to Pollock in the 1950's. Another
way to think of this question is to ask, "When, how
and where did the picture plane cease to be a window to look through and become a
surface to look at?" Use this information to structure some
comparisons. For example: Picasso's "Family of the Saltimbanques,"
and Miro's "Harlequin's
Carnival."
Part II - Essay. You will chose one question from
the list below -- you may prepare the essay ahead, but I expect you to write it
in class.
- The Ecole des Beaux-Arts in France established a hierarchy of types of
painting (history painting, genre painting, landscape, portraiture, still
life). Consider how artists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century were effected by these categories. In particular, consider
Courbet, Manet, Matisse, and Picasso. You may add others from more
recent art movements as well.
- Define Cubism and discuss
its influence on painting in the first half of the XXth century. So, make
sure you read the chapter on Cubism and the spread of Cubism. You may
include how Cubism influenced both architecture and sculpture as well, if
you wish.
- Discuss what made the following
particularly influential or shocking for their time - Courbet's "The Artist's
Studio," Manet's "Luncheon on the Grass," Cezanne's "Great Bathers," Picasso's, "Desmoiselles d'Avignon,"
Brancusi's Duchamps'
"Urinal" or "Bottlerack."
- Contesting Culture -- I invite you to prepare an essay that would address
art as a means for contesting culture. When and where do artists begin
to take on the job of social commentary or criticism? How in
particular has this impulse shaped art since
