Visual Art
Media: painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, design, crafts.
110 BC. Venus de Milo.
400 BC. Aphrodite of Knidos is a life-sized sculpture of a nude woman by Praxiteles of Athens.
400 Vergilius Romanus is an illustrated manuscript of the works of Virgil.
960. Song dynasty Screen printing
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_printing
- Convert to grayscale and adjust brightness for various areas to improve definition.
- Create bitmaps for each density range, assign a color to each, and print as guides.
- Cut rubylith by hand with a magnifying glass, scan to Illustrator, align
- Cut back edges of lighter color layers which are printed first.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravure
1382 Apocalypse Tapestry in Paris
1412 Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry is an illuminated manuscript containing 12 calendar scenes and a book of hours with prayers to recite.
International Gothic style emphasized a dignified elegance, rich decorative colouring, elongated figures and flowing lines.
Renaissance
In 1450, the Renaissance begins the early modern period in art, science, and politics.
Artists begin composing realistic, unified scenes with perspective. Emphasis on harmony, religion, and idealized beauty.
- Sfumato
- Camera obscura
- Mannerism. The Grand manner style uses visual metaphors, with classical architecture symbolizing cultivation and sophistication or pastoral backgrounds symbolizing virtue.
- The Gates of Paradise (1401) by Lorenzo Ghiberti is a set of bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery, depicting scenes from the New Testament with naturalistic perspective and idealization. Ghiberti’s workshop trains many artists, including Donatellow.
- Jan van Eyck rediscovers oil paint, in works like the Arnolfini Portrait (1434). Formerly egg tempera was dominant.
- Donatello’s David (c. 1440), commissioned by Medici, is the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity, sensual and with classical monumentality.
- Melozzo da Forli’s frescoes of the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli (1472) use heavy foreshortening.
- Flagellation of Christ (1470) by Piero della Francesca.
- Sandro Botticelli: The Birth of Venus (1485)
- 1504. David by Michelangelo is the first colossal statue in the Renaissance. He also sculpts La Pietà.
- Leonardo da Vinci
- The Last Supper (1495). Perspective and emotion. Motion: apostles gesture towards each other. Three groups of four.
- Mona Lisa (1506). Three-quarter profile; sfumato (soft blending) creates an ambiguous mood, and the smile only appears in peripheral vision; aerial perspective.
- Vitruvian Man (1490).
- Salvator Mundi (1500) is the most expensive painting sold, at $500 million.
- Rafael’s The School of Athens (1510) is a large and complex composition of Greek philosophers with accurate perspective.
- Rafael’s Portrait of Pope Julius II (1511) shows a highly realistic, intimate view.
- The Ambassadors (Holbein) features an anamorphosic skull.
- Titian
- Assumption of the Virgin (1517) is grand with broad, forceful gestures.
- Sleeping Venus or Dresden Venus partly by Giorgione (1510) is the first reclining nude.
- Venus of Urbino or Reclining Venus (1534): most famous reclining nude, sparking a Venetian tradition. Erotic.
- Renaissance in the Low Countries and the Dutch Golden Age, 1600s
- Dutch Hieronymus Bosch: The Last Judgment (1482) and The Garden of Earthly Delights (1500).
Baroque: intense, dramatic, complex compositions with rich colors.
- Bernini sculpture: Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1652), Rape of Proserpina (1622), Apollo and Daphne (1625).
- Caravaggio: The Calling of Saint Matthew (1600).
- Medusa (1596) and Judith Beheading Holofernes (1602) are startling.
- Peter Paul Rubens
- Massacre of the Innocents (1608).
- Venus and Adonis (1635). Dramatic theatrical compositions, powerful emotions, vivid color, and sensual forms.
- Las Meninas (1656) by Diego Velázquez has an enigmatic composition with odd sight lines and a mirror.
- Rembrandt paints The Night Watch (1642), The Return of the Prodigal Son.
- Johannes Vermeer
- Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665). Captivating, serene portraits with chiaroscuro, strong contrast of light and dark. Harmonious composition, rich colors, subtle tonal gradations.
- The Milkmaid (1658)
- The Art of Painting (1668)
- Van Dyck
- Frans Hals: Laughing Cavalier (1624). Very lifelike, and his eyes follow the viewer.
- Rococo or late Baroque art is very ornamental.
- The Blonde Odalisque (1751) by Francois Boucher.
1439 Beauvais Cathedral is one of the tallest structures in the world.
The Sistine Chapel in the Apostolic Palace is built in 1481. Michelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel ceiling and The Last Judgment around 1512.
St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City is rebuilt from 1506 to 1615.
Age of Enlightenment, 1650 - 1800
Liberalism and socialism.
A Harlot’s Progress (1732) by William Hogarth.
The Legion of Honor is built in 1787 on the left bank of the River Seine. The Californian Legion of Honor is a three-quarter scale replica built in 1924.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Performances
Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden 芥子园画传 (1679)
1700. Ukiyo-e woodblock prints
- Ōkubi-e 大首絵 large-headed portraits.
- Sharaku: energetic portraits of kabuki actors with funny facial expressions and hands.
- Hokusai, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
- 1831. The Great Wave off Kanagawa
- 1833. The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō by Hiroshige, including Hara showing Mount Fuji.
- Japonisme influence on French art
- 1915. Woman At Her Bath by Goyō Hashiguchi is the first Shin-hanga 新版画.
Romanticism, 1800 - 1837
Emphasizes emotional experience including sympathy, awe, wonder, and the sublime. Arts and Crafts movement.
Saturn Devouring His Son (1820) by Francisco Goya.
French Romanticism.
- Grande Odalisque (1814) by Ingres: reclining nude who is unrealistically elongated.
- Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834) by Eugene Delacroix depicts a merchant’s harem. Sharp colors. Woman sitting on one leg.
German Romanticism. Düsseldorf School paints “en plein air” (outdoors).
Hudson River School were American landscape painters like Thomas Cole depicting the Catskill and Adirondack mountains.
Qi Baishi: beautiful nature watercolors.
Biedermeier period in Europe: middle classes grow interest in conventional art after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Ends with the Revolutions of 1848.
Impressionism
- Vincent Van Gogh: The Night Café (1888), Café Terrace at Night (1888), The Starry Night (1889)
- Claude Monet: Water Lilies (1926).
- Paul Cezanne’s The Card Players (1894) sold for $300 million.
- Summer’s Day (1879) by Berthe Morisot: sunny scene of two women in a rowboat.
- Mary Cassatt (1880s): American, portraits of mothers and children.
- Neo-impressionism and pointilism
- A Sunday Afternoon (1886) by Georges Seurat.
- Paul Gauguin
- Vision After the Sermon (1888) has influence from Japanese woodblock prints.
- When Will You Marry? (1892). Ganguin traveled to Tahitian to find primitive art. Woman sitting on one leg. Sold for $200 million.
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir: vibrant light, saturated soft color, intimate composition.
- Portrait of Irène Cahen d’Anvers (1880)
- A Box at the Theater (1880): striking young woman.
- Madame Clémentine Valensi Stora (L’Algérienne) (1870): young Jewish woman in colorful Algerian clothing with a striking direct gaze.
- Parisian Women in Algerian Costume (The Harem) (1872)
- First Impressionist Exhibition (1874)
- Camille Pissarro
- Hyde Park, London (1890) depicts a colorful, vibrant path down an avenue of trees.
The Four Great Academy Presidents pioneer Chinese art: Yan Wenliang, Lin Fengmian, Xu Beihong and Liu Haisu.
Orientalism
- Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Slave Market (1866) and Pool in a Harem (1876). Pornographic.
Whistler’s Mother (1871) depicts the dignity and composure of his mother in flat gray tones.
Social realism
- Gustave Courbet: A Burial at Ornans (1849) depicts a provincial funeral on grand scale. The Stone Breakers (1849) depicts a bent old man and a poor young man in tattered, patched, dirty clothing.
- The Ashcan School depicts the urban poor.
- Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (1890) photographs the squalid conditions of New York tenements.
- Men of the Docks (1912) by George Bellows.
- Abastenia St. Leger Eberle: energeti sculptures. White Slave (1912) depicts child prostitution and causes controversy.
- Regionalism depicts Midwest life, especially during the Great Depression.
- Grant Wood: American Gothic (1930) and The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931).
- Norman Rockwell
- The Problem We All Live With (1964) shows a black girl escorted by US marshals during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis.
- Rosie the Riveter (1943)
- Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper depicts the loneliness of the city at night.
Modernism
- Edouard Manet: Olympia (1863), reclining nude prostitute (demi-mondaine) with a confrontational gaze. Attended by a black maid. Universally condemned.
- Auguste Rodin: The Thinker (1904) and The Burghers of Calais (1889).
- Henri Matisse and les Fauves (wild beasts) paint in bold, unnatural colors. Woman with a Hat (1905).
- De Stijl (“the style”) emphasizes abstract, universal, balanced compositions with simple axis-aligned rectangles and primary colors.
- Piet Mondrian produces grid-based paintings in primary colors.
- Georges Braque: Le Viaduc de l’Estaque (1907) and Houses at l’Estaque (1908). Geometric and cubist, often smeared.
- Pablo Picasso develops cubism in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937).
- Young Girl with a Flower Basket (1905) of a nude Parisian child prostitute who worked outside the Moulin Rouge. Realistic. Awkward statuesque pose and bright red flowers.
- Surrealism and Dada rejects World War I and capitalism.
- Salvador Dalí
- The Persistence of Memory (1931): melted clocks, mysterious seascape, unrecognizable animal
- The Elephants (1948): creatures with impossibly tall, spindly legs against a deep red sunset.
- Crucifixion (1954): Christ is fixed in the air against a hypercube, with no injuries.
- René Magritte
- The Treachery of Images or Ceci n’est pas une pipe (1929).
- The Son of Man (1964): a man with a green apple in front of his face, wearing a bowler hat, overcoat, and red tie.
- Marcel Duchamp exhibits the readymade Fountain (1917).
- Expressionism: The Scream (1893) by Edvard Munch.
- Symbolism: Gustav Klimt’s Death and Life (1915).
- Georgia O’Keeffe: flowers and landscapes
- Abstract expressionism
- Robert M. Coates coins the term.
- Wassily Kandinsky: On the Spiritual in Art (1911).
- Jackson Pollock drip paintings. Number 17A (1948) $250 million.
- Mark Rothko: large color field paintings to evoke deep emotional responses. No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red) (1951) $200 million.
- Willem de Kooning: Interchange (1955) is the second-most expensive painting sold at $400M.
- Elaine de Kooning: JFK watercolor (1963) is vibrant, young, dynamic. Sitting casually, leg up. Warm Florida sun, green foliage.
- The Matter of Time (2005) by Richard Serra: massive rolls of steel arranged in mazelike swirls.
- Pop art uses images of popular culture.
- Robert Rauschenberg: combine paintings incorporate everyday objects, and White Paintings (1951).
- Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) and the Marilyn Diptych (1962).
- Roy Lichtenstein: Masterpiece (1962) and Drowning Girl (1963).
- Jasper Johns: Flag (1955). $100 million.
- Love (1964).
- View of the World from 9th Avenue (1976) on The New Yorker.
- I Love New York (1977) is the official state slogan.
- Jeff Koons: Rabbit (1986): balloon animal sculpture in shiny stainless steel. Most expensive work sold by a living artist.
- Jean-Michel Basquiat: Untitled skull painting (1982) in angry black strokes. Sold for $100 million.
Glamor photography including pinup and beefcake associated with World War II.
- Tijuana bibles are palm-sized erotic comics.
- Rita Hayworth Life photo (1941) in negligee
- Betty Grable (1943) in a one-piece bathing suit.
- Bettie Page is the first famous bondage model.
- Farrah Fawcett red swimsuit poster (1976) sold twelve million copies.
- Playboy (1953) first issue features nude photographs of Marilyn Monroe on red velvet.
Banksy street art: Girl with Balloon (2002)
- Droste effect and mise en abyme is when a picture includes itself.
- MC Escher explores illusion and paradox, representations and levels of reality, and hyperbolic geometry. Print Gallery (1956), Drawing Hands (1948), Relativity (1953) triangular staircase, Waterfall (1961), Sky and Water (1938) fish and birds blend together in negative space.
- Vasarely pioneers Op art with optical illusions.
- Thomas Kinkade paints cottagecore scenes which are very commercially successful with Hallmark.
1931. Tube map: schematic, 45° angles, evenly-spaced stations, bold colors.
1932. Anglepoise balanced-arm lamp.
1962. Polypropylene stacking chair: designed by Robin Day. injection moulded.
1970. Monobloc chair:
Peter Saville designs album covers without text.
Marc Newson designs organic, translucent products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Great_Paintings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Museum
Pigment
iron gall ink used in Europe from 1100 to 1800. It causes ink corrosion.
India ink is a deep, rich carbon black from lampblack (fine soot).
Copper forms a verdigris patina, which is also used as a green pigment.
Lead white was the main white pigment since antiquity through the nineteenth century. It uses crystalline basic lead carbonate.
Zinc white (zinc oxide) is a cool white.
Titanium white (titanium dioxide) is a bright white with high hiding power.
Cadmium yellow (CdS) is an orange yellow. Cadmium red (CdS and CdSe).
Viridian is a bright spring green from hydrated chromium(III) oxide, available from 1850.
Paris green or emerald green is copper(II) acetate triarsenite.
Cerulean blue is a deep blue containing cobalt stannate, available from the 1870s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouache
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pigment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inorganic_pigments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decorative_arts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Photographs_that_Changed_the_World
ArtCyclopedia
Web Gallery of Art
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Arts_%26_Culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_Hewitt,_Smithsonian_Design_Museum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documenta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Goodman
https://www.mariangoodman.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotheby%27s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gagosian_Gallery