Art History 27

TITLE: Y no hai remedio ARTIST: Francisco de Goya Spain LOCATION: DATE: 1810-1823 PERIOD/STYLE: Romanticism and Realism PATRON: he leading general of Spain’s army MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE:Etching, drypoint, burin, and burnishing FORM: The Disasters series is comprised of more than 80 etchings, which range from the haunting and the stark to the horrific and grotesque. Y No Hai Remedio depicts the hopelessness and despair that the title signals. One prisoner already executed lies contorted on the ground at the feet of a bound, blindfolded man awaiting his own death. His executioners are represented only by the barrels of their rifles aiming menacingly from the right hand edge of the frame. FUNCTION: The first group of prints, to which "Y no hay remedio" belongs, shows the sobering consequences of conflict between French troops and Spanish civilians. The second group documents the effects of a famine that hit Spain in 1811-1812, at the end of French rule. The final set of pictures depicts the disappointment and demoralization of the Spanish rebels, who, after finally defeating the French, found that their reinstated monarchy would not accept any political reforms. Although they had expelled Bonaparte, the throne of Spain was still occupied by a tyrant. And this time, they had fought to put him there. CONTENT: The leading general of Spain’s army called upon Goya’s services. The artist was sent to the general’s hometown of Saragossa to record the glories of it’s citizens in the face of French atrocities. The sketches that Goya began in 1808 and continued to create throughout and after the Spanish War of Independence would eventually result in the print series he called “Fatal Consequences of the Bloody War in Spain with Bonaparte, and other emphatic caprices.” Rather than depicting local heroics, however, the Disasters of War, as the series came to be known, focused on the widespread suffering experienced in wartime and the brutality inflicted by both sides during periods of armed conflict. CONTEXT: Despite being employed by King Charles IV of Spain, Goya was inspired by the Enlightenment values of democracy and liberalism, and the way they were beginning to materialize in the early French Revolution. Disillusionment hit hard, however, when the French Revolution turned to the Reign of Terror, and Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power. The eighty-two images add up to a visual indictment of and protest against the French occupation of Spain by Napoleon Bonaparte. The French Emperor had seized control of the country in 1807 after he tricked the king of Spain, Charles IV, into allowing Napoleon’s troops to pass its border, under the pretext of helping Charles invade Portugal. He did not. Instead, he usurped the throne and installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as ruler of Spain. Soon, a bloody uprising, occurred, in which countless Spaniards were slaughtered in Spain’s cities and countryside. Although Spain eventually expelled the French in 1814 following the Peninsular War (1807-1814), the military conflict was a long and gruesome ordeal for both nations. INNOVATION/CONVENTION: Throughout The Disasters of War series, Goya made use of a printmaking technique called etching. In this method, a sharp point is used to draw on the surface of a metal plate covered in a wax foundation. Acid is poured onto the exposed areas, burning the lines deep into the metal plate, which are then cleaned of the wax, dipped into ink, and stamped onto paper. The more shadowy areas of the image are created with the aquatint technique, which uses a form of pitch called rosin as a printing ink. These combined methods for creating images allowed plates to be reused, thus affording the reproduction of prints, which was both a novelty and good for the bank account. ARTISTIC DECISIONS: While Goya once identified as neoclassical artist, his style evolved to align more with Romanticism. Romantic painters tended to show the darker and definitively more chaotic aspects of humanity, like those depicted in Y no hai remedio. Goya explored themes of irrationality, folly, and corruption in earlier works including the satiric Los Caprichos, but images he created during and after the war with France were much darker, both emotionally and visually , than anything he had done previously. In 1792, Goya got sick with either Meniere’s disease, polio, botulism, or hepatitis, and he lost his hearing. This was when his paintings changed from Rococco portraits to dark and brooding etchings. He continued as court painter under French ocupation and again after the return of King Fernando. INTERPRETATION: Goya’s Disasters of War series was not printed until thirty-five years after the artist’s death, when it was finally safe for the artist’s political views to be known. The images remain shocking today, and even influenced the novel of famous American author Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, a book about the violence and inhumanity in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Hemingway shared Goya’s belief, expressed in The Disasters of War, that war, even if justified, brings out the inhumane in man, and causes us to act like beasts. And for both artists, the consumer, who examines the dismembered corpses of the aquatints or reads the gruesome descriptions of murder but does nothing to stop the assassin, is complicit in the violence with the murderer. DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS: Goya was the court painter for Spanish King Charles IV until the monarch was removed from the throne during Napoleon’s invasion in 1808. Probably as a way to release his angst, Goya made The Disasters of War prints in secret, and they are more telling than the official work he produced for either the Spanish or the French courts. La Grande Odalisque TITLE: LOCATION: France DATE: 1814 Jean-Auguste-Dominique PERIOD/STYLE: Exoticism(Orientalism)/ ARTIST: PATRON: The Sister of Napolean Neoclassical Romanticism Caroline Murat Ingres MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE: Oil on canvas FORM: Here, Ingres painted a nude with long, sinuous lines bearing little resemblance to anatomical reality, but rendered the details and texture of the fabrics with sharp precision. This work drew fierce criticism when it was displayed at the Salon of 1819. FUNCTION: A figure in response to a commission from Caroline Murat, it is a Greco Roman subject painted as a Neoclassical Figure dressed as a Turkish Odalisque consistent with Romantic taste for the exotic. CONTENT: A 19th century French construction of what the public imagined the erotic orient to look like. Here a languid nude is set in a sumptuous interior. At first glance this nude seems to follow in the tradition of the Great Venetian masters, see for instance, Titian’s Venus of Urbino of 1538 (left). But upon closer examination, it becomes clear that this is no classical setting. Instead, Ingres has created a cool aloof eroticism accentuated by its exotic context. The peacock fan, the turban, the enormous pearls, the hookah (a pipe for hashish or perhaps opium), and of course, the title of the painting, all refer us to the French conception of the Orient. Careful—the word “Orient” does not refer here to the Far East so much as the Near East or even North Africa. CONTEXT: Studying under Jacques-Louis David for four years, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres developed a Neoclassical approach that changed little as his career unfolded. Known for his extraordinary drawing skills, Ingres believed that line, not color, conveyed the expressive content in an image. He did not share his colleagues’ enthusiasm for battle scenes, preferring to depict revelatory moments and intimate confrontations that rarely included movement or violence, and his early work was criticized for stylistic and historical idiosyncrasies. Ingres despised the more fashionable work of the Romantics such as Eugene Delacroix, and was despondent when his work was poorly received in the Salons. Inspired by Orientalism, Ingres painted a series of odalisques that were originally panned for their exaggerated anatomy and depiction of odd accessories, but were later hailed as Romantic masterpieces. INNOVATION/CONVENTION: Fidelity to the anatomy is secondary to the sensuality of the figure. Ingres actually returned to Neoclassicism after having first rejected the lessons of his teacher David. He could even be said to have laid the foundation for the emotive expressiveness of Romanticism (the new style of Gericault and the young Delacroix that Ingres would later hold the line against). Ingres’s early Romantic tendencies can be seen most famously in his painting La Grande Odalisque of 1814. Ingres was influenced by Mannerist painting and, perhaps, by Persian illuminated manuscripts. The Neoclassically trained Ingres led the Poussinists (named after the French baroque painter Nicolas Poussin). These artists relied on drawing and line for their compositions. ARTISTIC DECISIONS: When he exhibited the painting, Ingres was lambasted for his total disregard for anatomical realism, despite his attention to the surface qualities of the woman’s skin and to the lush fabric. Although Ingres championed the values of Neoclassicism, many of his portraits stray from neoclassical values, particularly the emphasis on a figure’s proportion. The woman’s arms seem to lack bones, and her back appears spineless. The anatomical distortions of the odalisque continue to fascinate art fans. Some reviewers have gone as far as to test the “three vertebrae too many” accusation made by critics of his day. After testing a series of models, they have concluded that the odalisque in fact has five vertebrae too many, not three. INTERPRETATION: The odalisque alluded to Europe’s mixed feelings towards non-Westerners, whom they characterized not only as feminine, but also as primitive and alluringly erotic. Despite the whole patronizing aspect of this perception, Orientalism was totally in vogue in painting and fashion in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the mind of an early 19th century French male viewer, the odalisque would have conjured up not just a harem slave—itself a misconception—but a set of fears and desires linked to the long history of aggression between Christian Europe and Islamic Asia . Ingres’ porcelain sexuality is made acceptable even to an increasingly prudish French culture because of the subject’s geographic distance. Where, for instance, the Renaissance painter Titian had veiled his eroticism in myth (Venus), Ingres covered his object of desire in a misty, distant exoticism. DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS: The term odalisque from The Grande Odalisque is derived from the Turkish word odalik, which typically references a courtesan within a harem. Its usage reflects a general fascination with what was then referred to as the Orient, part of an age-old trend now called Orientalism. At the time, France and other western nations were enthralled by non-western cultures—the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia—because they perceiving these cultures as exotic and erotic. TITLE: Liberty Leading the People Eugene Delacroix ARTIST: France LOCATION: PERIOD/STYLE: Romanticism DATE: 1830 PATRON: King Louis Phillipe MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE: Oil on canvas FORM: She holds a bayonetted musket in her left hand and raises the tricolor—the French national flag—with her right. This red, white, and blue arrangement of the flag is mimicked by the attire worn by the man looking up at her. On the left, a fallen adolescent who wears a light infantry bicorne and holds a short saber, struggles to regain his footing amongst the piled cobblestones that make up a barricade. The more famous of the pair, however, is on the right side of the painting (image, right). Often thought to be the visual inspiration for Hugo’s character of Gavroche in Les Misérables, this boy wildly wields two pistols. FUNCTION: Although Delacroix completed this painting during same year in which the event occurred, it is, at its core, a history painting. Indeed, Delacroix depicts an event from the July Revolution of 1830, an event that replaced the abdicated King Charles X (r. 1824-30)—a member of the Bourbon family and the younger brother of the guillotined King Louis XVI (r. 1774-1792)—with Louis Philippe I (r. 1830-48), the so-called Citizen King. This uprising of 1830 was the historical prelude to the June Rebellion of 1832, an event featured in Victor Hugo’s famous novel, Les Misérables (1862), and the musical (1980) and films that followed. CONTENT: The man on the far left holds a briquet (an infantry saber commonly used during the Napoleonic Wars). His clothing—apron, working shirt, and sailor’s trousers—identify him as a factory worker, a person in the lower end of the economic ladder. His other attire identifies his revolutionary leanings. The handkerchief around his waist, that secures a pistol, has a pattern similar to that of the Cholet handkerchief, a symbol used by François Athannase de Charette de la Contrie, a Royalist solider who led an ill-fated uprising against the First Republic, the government established as a result of the French Revolution. The white cockade and red ribbon secured to his beret also identify his revolutionary sensibilities. This factory worker provides a counterpoint to the younger man beside him who is clearly of a different economic status. He wears a black top hat, an open-collared white shirt and cravat, and an elegantly tailored black coat. Rather than hold a military weapon like his older brother-in-arms, he instead grasps a hunting shotgun. These two figures make clear that this revolution is not just for the economically downtrodden, but for those of affluence, too. CONTEXT: The pursuit of liberty in the face of corruption had been a ready motif ever since the French Revolution, and it was still going strong during the July Revolution in 1830, three days in July in which Parisians revolted, yet again.France had seen many rulers in the time since the French Revolution, and they weren’t too happy with any of them. After Napoleon’s meteoric demise, Louis XVIII ascended the throne, and with Louis XVIII’s death, Charles X, his younger brother and a king in the French Bourbon line, ascended the throne. Ole’ Charlie X quickly started rubbing the public the wrong way with his fits and general disregard for the law. Pretty soon, the seething masses took to the streets to revolt against Charles X during the July Revolution. After the dust settled, Louis Philippe, celebrated as a “citizen king,” promptly took over. Whether he would make the people any happier, only time would tell. (He didn’t.)While Delacroix’s painting embodied the fervor of the July Revolution, Liberty Leading the People relays the power of the people—emphasis here on people—not the right of any particular ruler. INNOVATION/CONVENTION: Delacroix wrote, “I have undertaken a modern subject, a barricade, and although I may not have fought for my country, at least I shall have painted for her. It has restored my good spirits.” In doing so, Delacroix completed what has become both a defining image of French romanticism and one of the most enduring modern images of revolution. It has even been appropriated—although slightly altered—by the British rock band Coldplay as an album cover for their 2006 release Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. ARTISTIC DECISIONS: The Rubenists (named in honor of the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens), elevated color over line. By the time Delacroix was in his mid-20s—that is, by 1823—he was one of the leaders of the ascending French romantic movement. Rather than look to the examples of the classical past for a narrative, Delacroix instead looked to contemporary world events for his subject. This “ripped from the headlines” approach was common for many romantic painters. INTERPRETATION: Delacroix did not mean to suggest that there was a half-naked woman running around carrying a loaded firearm and a flag during the Trois Glorieuses—the Three Glorious Days as it came to be known—of the July Revolution. Instead, she serves as an allegory—in this instance, a pictorial device intended to reveal a moral or political idea—of Liberty. In this, she is similar to an example familiar to those in the United States, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty (1886). Clearly, this monumental statue is not a portrait of a woman named Liberty who wears a Roman toga, carries a torch, and an inscribed tablet. Instead, she represents an idea. The same is true of Delacroix’s painted Liberty. DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS: The Phrygian cap is an important bit of costuming—in ancient Rome, freed slaves were given one to wear to indicate their newly liberated status, and this headwear became a symbol of freedom and liberty on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The young boy with two pistol wears a faluche—a black velvet beret common to students—and carries what appears to be a school or cartridge satchel (with a crest that may be embroidered) across his body. Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing TITLE: Overboard the Dead and Dying Typhoon Coming On LOCATION: England Joseph Mallord William Turner PERIOD/STYLE: Romanticism ARTIST: DATE: 1840 PATRON: John Ruskin MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE: Oil on canvas FORM: Upon first glance, it’s hard to make sense of the scene because individual elements appear to meld into one another. Closer inspection reveals an ocean in the foreground deluging a cluster of arms, legs, and chains. Still closer inspection reveals that the ship, though it’s some distance away, already has its sails down, preparing for stormy weather. It is also possible to make out fish and other sea creatures of different sizes rising to the surface, no doubt looking for a meal. FUNCTION: Turner painted The Slave Ship in 1840 as a propaganda piece, hoping it would catch the attention of Prince Albert at the British Anti-Slavery Conference. CONTENT: A sky seemingly lit on fire, a ship crashing into waves, and bodies submerged in the watery chaos, Joseph Mallord William Turner painted this scene of an even from 1781 in 1840. ship (slave ship) sailing directly into a storm, abandoning the slaves that were thrown overboard to drown. Fiery sunset, writhing foam and waves. Fish with teeth chomping at the slaves’ chained limbs. A wall of water and grey clouds dooming the ship to shipwreck (as punishment and vengeance for the death of slaves; upsetting of the balance of nature) “Turner’s chaotic canvas shows a fierce storm. Body parts, still shackled and being attacked by sharp-teethed fish, can be seen in the central and right foreground.” CONTEXT: Turner was inspired by the real life Zong Massacre. The British ship Zong set sail from Africa overloaded with slaves in 1781. When the ship sailed off course and water allegedly grew scarce, the crew abided by the age-old law of the sea: women and children first. Unfortunately, in this case that didn’t refer to lifeboats. They started by forcing 54 female and child slaves through portholes into the sea, probably because they were less valuable than adult males. In the ensuing holocaust that lasted several days, 142 people were thrown overboard, including 10 who jumped in protest. After the first wave of killings, remaining victims begged the crew to starve them rather than dump them into the ocean, but the crew didn’t comply because they couldn’t collect insurance on slaves who died of natural causes. Upon reaching shore (with 420 imperial gallons of the supposedly dwindling water), the crew attempted to file an insurance claim on the murdered slaves. The courts ultimately ruled against them, not because of the atrocities they had committed, but because they were negligent and mismanaged their cargo. When abolitionists tried to press criminal charges, the British Solicitor General dismissed them. He said that no “human people” had been jettisoned, and that it was “madness to accuse these well-serving honorable men of murder…the case is the same as if wood had been thrown overboard.” INNOVATION/CONVENTION: The painting is historical for this reason: It captures the sentiment of the tragedy not with incredible detail, but with broad swaths of color and gestural brushstrokes, a style for which the romantic-era landscape painter became known. Turner’s fierce palette of oranges radiate across the sky, starkly contrasting the menacing grey sea. The result is an expression of pure mayhem. “Turner uses intense colors and turbulent brushstrokes to convey the heightened emotion of the event.” ARTISTIC DECISIONS: Hailing from London, Turner became known for his depictions of light as well as his fascination for shipwrecks and natural catastrophes. Over time, his style changed from detailed and realistic to expressive and romantic. Natural, nautical catastrophes were his favorite subjects. For Turner and other romantic painters, nature could be both awe-inspiring and totally scary, and the philosophy of the sublime arose from this contradiction. Turner painted Slave Ship after reading The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade. Perhaps because of his anti-slavery leanings, Turner exhibited the painting at the same time the British Anti-Slavery Society held their meeting (slavery was officially abolished in the British Empire in 1833). As if the long title wasn’t enough for helping to make sense of the painting, Turner also wrote a poem about it. He must have really wanted to get his point across. INTERPRETATION: Turner was also a poet and wrote the following to accompany his work at the exhibition in 1840. “Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay; Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds Declare the Typhon’s coming. Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard The dead and dying - ne’er heed their chains Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope! Where is thy market now?” DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS: Ruskin wrote: “Purple and Blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist if night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shallow of death upon the guilty ship, as it labors amidst the lighting of the sea, it’s think masts written upon the sky in lines of blood” The Oxbow A View from TITLE: Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm ARTIST: Thomas Cole U.S. (Massachusetts) LOCATION: PERIOD/STYLE: Romanticism DATE: 1836 PATRON: Luman Reed MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE: Oil on canvas FORM: The Oxbow combines a flare for drama with an air of tranquility. The painting moves from dramatic to peaceful, and a pastoral scene stretches out below. The Connecticut River winds through farmland, forming a crescent shape called (drumroll please) an oxbow. Just beyond the bend, the Mt. Holyoke range can be seen in the distance. The gridded farmland below suggests human intervention in an otherwise Eden-like landscape. FUNCTION: The landscapes Cole began to paint in the 1830s were not entirely about the land. In these works, Cole used the land as a way to say something important about the United States. When viewed through the lens of nineteenth-century political ideology, this painting eloquently speaks about the widely discussed topic of westward expansion. It clearly speaks to the ideology of Manifest Destiny. During the 19th century discussions of westward expansion dominated political discourse. The Louisiana Purchase of 1804 essentially doubled the size of the United States, and many believed that it was a divinely ordained obligation of Americans to settle this westward territory. In The Oxbow, Cole visually shows the benefits of this process. CONTENT: The painting reveals a couple of Thomas Cole’s signatures: vast panoramas punctuated by the most miniscule of details and a meeting between humans and nature. The Oxbow, like another of Cole’s works, A View of the Two Lakes and Mountain House, Catskill Mountains, Morning, features an epic canyon with a small white house painted in the distance. A man with a walking stick in hand stands on a rock, taking in the view. While the house symbolizes humanity, it’s clear that nature dwarfs everything within its dominion. The tranquility and grandeur of nature relayed in both works is a key feature in all of Cole’s paintings, and one quality that stood out to him in the American landscape CONTEXT: Cole was a sentimental guy, and his landscapes convey a sense of deep reflection inspired by sublime spaces. This romantic response to the wide open yonder came at a time when landscapes were going through a great change. America was on the tipping point of the Industrial Revolution, which threatened these idyllic landscapes. The meeting of a wild, untamed landscape and settled farmland in this piece implies a conflict between the natural world and the encroaching world of man.While Cole’s paintings show some aspects of human development (small housing and pastures), his depictions trend toward conveying agrarian environments in harmony with the natural landscape. Tinged with a certain amount of nostalgia, these paintings contrasted with the realities of ongoing commercial progress and huge feats like New York’s Erie Canal. Despite Cole’s counter-cultural ideals, he found a group of painters who shared his values, and they all lived happily ever after, experimenting with romantic painting styles at the Hudson River School. INNOVATION/CONVENTION: Cole was the founder of the Hudson River School. (a group of New York city-based landscape painters). During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, great artists aspired to complete large-scale historical compositions, paintings that often had an instructive moral message. Landscape paintings, in contrast, were often though more imitative than innovative. But in his works, Cole was able to take the American landscape and imbue it with a moral message, as was often found in history paintings. Thomas Cole exerted a powerful influence on the course of landscape painting in the United States during the nineteenth century. Not content to merely paint the land, Cole elevated the landscape genre to approach the status of historical painting. The landscape painters who followed during the middle of the nineteenth century—Church, Durant, Bierstadt, and others—would often follow the trail that Cole had blazed. ARTISTIC DECISIONS: INTERPRETATION: On the hillside beyond the oxbow, Cole left a hidden message: the word Noah is roughly incised in Hebrew letters, a code that read upside down spells out Shaddai, the Almighty. Is Cole suggesting that the landscape be read as a holy text that reveals the word of God? If so, wouldn’t any human intrusion be a sacrilege? On the other hand, the artist’s careful division of the landscape implies that civilization drives out the danger and chaos inherent in the natural world. Perhaps the painting itself embodies Cole’s ambivalence. It was produced, after all, expressly for public exhibition in the expectation of material gain — an artful exploitation of the nation’s natural beauty. DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS: There are a few hard-to-find details in this painting. When looked at upside-down, the grooves in the distant hillside for the Hebrew letters for the word shaddai, meaning “The Almighty.” Look closely in the foliage in the foreground, and you’ll see that Cole included a mini-self-portrait as well, as he sits at an easel in a yellow top hat, painting the scene below. An oxbow is a U-shaped piece of wood that fits under and around the neck of an ox, with its upper ends attached to the bar of a yoke. Palace of Westminster TITLE: Charles Barry and ARTIST: Augustus W.N. Pugin London, England LOCATION: PERIOD/STYLE: Neo-gothic DATE: 1840-1870 PATRON:Parliamentary Commission MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE: Limestone masonry and glass FORM: Constructed in the Gothic Revival style, the Palace of Westminster occupies the banks of the River Thames in the City of Westminster, London. Its home to England’s parliament, which is made up of the members of the House of Lords and members of the House of Commons. FUNCTION: The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Commonly known as the Houses of Parliament after its occupants, the Palace lies on the north bank of the River Thames in the City of Westminster, in central London, England. Barry was chosen to construct the Palace of Westminster in the aftermath of a fire in 1512 that destroyed an 11th century royal palace originally located on the site. That palace had been home to the kings of England, but after the fire swept through, it became Parliament’s main spot for meeting about all matters of the state. Barry enlisted Pugin for help with the finer details of Gothic architecture. CONTENT: Westminster Palace has a number of towers, including Victoria’s Tower (the largest) and Elizabeth’s Tower, better known as “Big Ben.” There’s also St. Stephen’s tower, the Central Tower, the Speaker’s Tower, and the Chancellor’s Tower. The latter two are named after the Speaker of the House and the Lord Chancellor. Below the Central Tower lies the octagonal Central Lobby. It’s decked out with a great chandelier and a series of Venetian mosaics covering the ceiling spaces between the ribs of the vaulting. It also boasts a post office for all that royal mail as well as large statues of former parliamentarians, including William Gladstone. Perhaps most importantly, it’s located at the juncture between the House of Commons to the north and the House of Lords to the south. It’s impossible, moreover, to count the number of entrances in the Palace of Westminster; every Member of Parliament has his or her own door. IIt wouldn’t be complete without the Queen’s Robing Room, where her majesty preps for the Imperial State Opening. CONTEXT: Saint Edward the Confessor built the first palace here in 1050, at the same time as the construction of Westminster Abbey. It consisted of a collection of buildings including a hall and private apartments, a further development of the Danish King Cnut’s residence. After the Norman conquest of 1066 the palace became the political meeting place of the Royal Council (Curia Regis). The first elected parliament was in 1265 during the reign of the Plantagenet King Henry III. In 1295 King Edward I formed the first official parliament of England. Today the Houses of Parliament are at the centre of British Government, the meeting place of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. INNOVATION/CONVENTION: The Gothic style of architecture that Charles Barry and Augustus W.N. Pugin put to use had been in vogue during the medieval period. Typically reserved for religious buildings in the past, it made a comeback in 18th- and 19th-century secular buildings, such as the House of Parliament. ARTISTIC DECISIONS: The new structure had to be designed in either the Gothic or Elizabethan styles. The competition was won by Charles Barry who believed that the Gothic style of decoration to be the most moral and style of architecture. The modern era of the Industrial revolution couldn’t deliver the beauty expected by the public and the English people were nostalgic for the old apprenticeship system and hand crafted art and tradition. The building is placed on a concrete bed, and features towers that support ventilation (a modern consideration). Pugin was responsible for the interior design and decoration of the palace. He imagined that the medieval Gothic world had been guided by faith, while the modern era was driven by a quest for money and fortune. The building spans the edge of the River Thames. It is modeled after Chapel of Henry VII. This building has a classical tradition in the rational regularity and horizontality of the shape, but with a Gothic skin on it. INTERPRETATION: During the Victorian era there was a real nostalgia for the old hand crafted arts of the medieval period. This love of gothic architecture is a reflection of those bygone days. DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS: Built on the site of a medieval palace, and possibly a Roman Temple dedicated to Apollo, the palace has been in continuous use since the first half of the 11th century. The present Gothic palace, re-built in 1854 by Charles Barry, has over 1100 rooms, 100 staircases, 11 courtyards and a 200m riverside terrace used for entertaining. Still Life in Studio TITLE: France LOCATION: ARTIST: Louis-Jacques-Mandes Da- PERIOD/STYLE: Realism/Daguerreotype guerre MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE: Daguerreotype FORM: DATE: 1837 PATRON: FUNCTION: CONTENT: The 3 dimensional forms of the sculptures, the basket, and the bits of cloth spring into high relief. The inspiration for the composition came from 17th century Dutch vanitas still lifes. CONTEXT: photography perfectly suited an age that saw the emergence of Realism as an art movement and a pronounced shift of artistic patronage away from the elite few toward a broader base of support. The growing and increasingly powerful middle class embraced both the comprehensible images of the new medium and their lower cost. INNOVATION/CONVENTION: Like the photography that came after it, daguerreotype’s main ingredient was light. Using a light-sensitive sheet of silver-plated copper, a daguerreotypist would direct the camera toward a subject and, after exposing the film to mercury fumes (totally toxic, by the way), the image was fixed onto a plate. The plate was then dipped in a chemical bath and placed in a glass encasing, and voila, a direct positive was created! The direct positive that Daguerre invented was basically a way of capturing an image as it appeared, not reversed as one might see a mirror image. While the process was novel, the creation of a fixed scene, or still life, was a convention borrowed from painting. Most often, a still life depicted objects such as vases of flowers, small sculptures, food, or other vaguely-boring knick-knackery. In the example above, a number of plaster casts make their way into the scene, along with a framed image to the right. Daguerre’s other earliest image was a street scene: Boulevard du Temple, Paris, 3rd arrondissement. ARTISTIC DECISIONS: By 1839, Daguerre refined his process and announced it to the Academy of Sciences, promptly giving the technology to the French government afterward and retiring on the cash they gave him in exchange. Over the next twenty years, the daguerreotype caught on like wildfire and was the primary means of capturing an image with light. INTERPRETATION: Photographers in the 19th century were pioneers in a new artistic endeavor, blurring the lines between art and technology. Frequently using traditional methods of composition and marrying these with innovative techniques, photographers created a new vision of the material world. Despite the struggles early photographers must have had with the limitations of their technology, their artistry is also obvious. DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS: Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s Still Life in a Studio was one of the earliest photographic likenesses ever made. As anyone who might invent something so monumentally life changing, Daguerre named the first process of making photographic images after himself, hence the word daguerreotype. Greek “photos”= light, “graphos”=writing. The Stone Breakers TITLE: Gustave Courbet ARTIST: France LOCATION: PERIOD/STYLE: Realism DATE: 1849 PATRON: MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE: oil on canvas FORM: The painting is 5’3X8’6” nearly life-size. It is a straightforward, non-heroic representation of two men breaking stones to provide paving for provincial roads. Courbet’s palette of dirty browns and drab grays further conveys the dreary and dismal nature of the task, and the angular positioning of the older stone breaker’s limbs suggests a mechanical monotony. FUNCTION: To serve as a type of manifesto for the Realist movement, exhibited in his own show in 1851 called the “Pavilion of Realism”. CONTENT: The large size of The Stone Breakers is partly political: It was impossible to ignore the patched clothing and worn boots of the men on such a large canvas. Nor would anyone mistake the tools of the workers’ trade—the hammer and pick ax—or the craggy rocks and the harsh contrast between blazing sun and shadow. The workers’ forms are clearly delineated with thick, dark lines, offering further detail to their clothes and poses. Their faces remain hidden, however. While royalty and aristocracy were easily identifiable in paintings, these workers were anonymous, an allusion to the faceless masses that made up the working class. CONTEXT: At the time The Stone Breakers was painted, France had gone through yet another major transformation. The year before, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected president of the French Second Republic after the reign of King Louis-Philippe. French people experienced some serious déjà-vu, however, when Louis-Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, decided to also crown himself emperor in 1852, just as his uncle had. When Courbet displayed his painting at the Paris Salon of 1850, nearly all were shocked at his bold move to bring the toils of the plebes to the attention of the ever self-important bourgeois. Even though democracy was in the air with Louis-Napoleon’s election, the participants of the salon hadn’t gotten the memo. INNOVATION/CONVENTION: In this early example of social realism (not to be confused with socialist realism a century or so later), Courbet depicts the toils of the lower class with full grim reality. Intentionally large in size (65 inches by 101 inches), the painting shows grueling, day-to-day work and rebels against the tradition of representing only the rich and famous in large and detailed portraits. Like a lot of other painters in the years to come (Édouard Manet comes to mind), Courbet’s work signaled new artistic trends, especially the trend of painting not-so-famous people. Other important members in the movement of social realism included Jean-François Millet and Rosa Bonheur. Courbet and the rest of this lot favored painting regular people over epic historical scenes (think The Oath of The Horatii for example). Millet’s painting The Gleaners is similar to The Stone Breakers in its depiction of the act of gleaning, or the gathering the leftover grain after harvest. ARTISTIC DECISIONS: Courbet’s interest in the working class poor as a subject matter had a special resonance for his mid 19th century French audience. In 1848 laborers rebelled against the bourgeois leaders of the newly formed Second Republic and against the rest of the nation, demanding better working conditions and redistribution of property. The army quelled the uprising in three days, but not without long lasting trauma and significant loss of life. The 1848 revolution raised the issue of labor as a national concern. Courbet’s depiction of stone breakers in 1849 was thus time, populist, and in the view of the conservative Salon jurors, “Socialistic.” INTERPRETATION: Traditionally this work fell to the lowest members of French society. By juxtaposing youth and old age, Courbet is suggesting that those born into poverty will remain poor their entire lives. The artist neither romanticized nor idealizes the men’s work but depicted their thankless toil with directness and accuracy. DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS: Unfortunately, the painting met a sad end when the vehicle carrying it, along with many other artworks, was bombed en route to Dresden for safekeeping during WWII. “I have never seen an angel. Show me one , and I’ll paint it.” Nadar Rasing Photography to LOCATION: France TITLE: the Height of Art ARTIST: Honore Daumier PERIOD/STYLE: Realism DATE: 1862 PATRON: MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE: Lithograph FORM: To create the lithograph, Daumier drew onto a limestone surface with an oil-based substance. The whole surface was then treated with gum Arabic, which filled the negative space of the image, subsequently etching those areas into the stone. Those areas were then filled in with water, and the original image was covered with ink to be printed directly onto paper. It was a lengthy process, but it allowed multiple copies to be created, so it paid off. Daumier used it frequently in publications like La Boulevard, where this caricature was originally published. FUNCTION: This lithograph was published in a journal “Le Boulevard” CONTENT: This lithograph presents Nadar as a quacky photographer, in his excitement to get a daring shot he almost falls out of his balloon and loses his hat. The main reason for this reaction of artists against photography was the substantial increase in the usefulness and ease of technological access to the “camera”. The early days of photography which required 8 hours of exposure were disappearing quickly with the daguerrotype, followed by the calotype, followed further by the 5 minute exposure time collodion method. As well, the ability to make copies became widely available and utilized. This quickly advancing technology which made still-lifes 10 times quicker than a painter could was threatening, and as such there were objections, such as this lithograph. CONTEXT: This lithograph lampoons Gaspard-Felix Tournachon, a.k.a. Nadar, a figure popular for taking the first aerial photograph of Paris in 1856. Many people at the time considered photography the coolest invention since the advent of indoor plumbing (sliced bread hadn’t been invented yet); however, the medium had yet to achieve the status of “high art,” or art that followed the rules of the academy. Daumier was definitely one of those staunch members of the academy who scoffed haughtily at the mention of photography as high art. Naysayers thought that the medium simply replicated the world and didn’t require the creative eye of a painter or sculptor to translate one’s surroundings or personal experience into something more meaningful. This drawing was completed after a court decision in 1862 that determined that photographs could be determined as works of art. INNOVATION/CONVENTION: This event foreshadows modern surveillance photographs. The lithographer uses a greasy, oil based crayon to draw directly on a stone plate and then wipes water onto the stone, which clings only to the areas of the stone that the image does not cover. Next, the artist rolls oil based ink onto the stone, which adheres to the drawing but is repelled by the water. When the artist presses the stone against a piece of paper, only the inked area--the drawing-- transfers to the paper. Daumier was on of the earliest masters of this technique, and by publishing his work in journals such as Caricature and L’Association, he reached an audience of unprecedented size. ARTISTIC DECISIONS: In a broadly sketchlike technique he recorded observations from his everyday life: street entertainers, histrionics of the stage or the courts of law, railway travelers, artists at work, collectors rummaging in their portfolios. Caricature and comic effect, central to his works on paper, hardly appear in his paintings in oil. It seems as if, in his modesty, he considered humor appropriate for the popular media of communication but unsuited to the dignity of painting. INTERPRETATION: Both the difficulties of the method and uncertain but growing status of photography were lampooned by Honoré Daumier in his Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of Art (1862). Nadar, one of the most prominent photographers in Paris at the time, was known for capturing the first aerial photographs from the basket of a hot air balloon. Obviously, the difficulties in developing a glass negative under these circumstances must have been considerable. DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS: Nadar was a French novelist, balloonist, caricaturist and champion of photography. He was known for his calotype photography and his portraits. His subjects included Delacroix, Daumier, Courbet, and Manet. Nadar’s balloon was later reused in the 1870 Siege of Paris. Olympia TITLE: Edouard Manet ARTIST: France LOCATION: PERIOD/STYLE: Realism DATE: 1863 PATRON: MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE: Oil on canvas FORM: Inspired by Titian’s Venus of Urbino from 1583, this painting features a prostitute reclining on her couch. FUNCTION: For admission to the annual Salon of 1865. An effort that could make or break his financial career as an artist. CONTENT: Manet purposefully lifted the basic form of this painting from Titian’s Venus of Urbino (among others) and turned just about everything about the 16th century classic on its head. Rather than a lush, sensuous setting and an inviting subject, Manet drops various hints that the woman in this painting is a prostitute. From her posture to the black ribbon around her neck to her name (Olympia was a stereotypical prostitute’s name in 1860s Paris) to the cat, a symbol of prostitution, at the edge of the bed—in place of a dog representing fidelity in Venus of Urbino. Olympia is a high-class prostitute, sitting on her luxurious bed receiving flowers from one of her many clients and confronts the viewer with a startling gaze. CONTEXT: Manet had already seen his share of controversy when he exhibited another painting titled Luncheon in the Grass (1863), which depicts a picnic between two fully clothed men and a nude woman. The woman depicted in that painting was the same woman depicted in Olympia, Victorine Meurent. Manet was a big fan of Victorine and painted her many times over the course of his career. Despite the inclusion of one of his favorite models, the Paris Salon had rejected Luncheon in the Grass two years prior to the creation of Olympia. As a result, the painting was exhibited in the Salon des Refusés, which was basically a salon for rejected painters. As one might guess, this wasn’t actually a vote of confidence for participating artists. If Manet thought that Olympia might receive more favorable attention, he was dead wrong. In fact, critics thought that the painting was downright vulgar and banned him for his style as a result. Though the painting was allowed into the Paris Salon, it was hung at a higher level where hecklers couldn’t reach it. Manet thought it was all an overreaction, but not surprisingly, the whole scandal hurt his feelings. INNOVATION/CONVENTION: While many still upheld the tradition of the Paris Salon, it was clear by Manet’s time that the institution was inflexible. Manet, along with Courbet, was a painter who challenged the ivory tower that the Paris Salon represented with gritty images of a life outside the bourgeois bubble. Manet rejected the subjects demanded by the Academy, notably great events from the Bible, myth, and history. He wanted to depict modern life, ordinary men and women attending the opera, enjoying a picnic, or flirting at a bar. Manet revered his predecessors and honored the masters by transforming their compositions. ARTISTIC DECISIONS: Manet’s flat depiction of space also jarred viewers: The curtains and wall in the background seem especially depthless with only cursory smudges of color to allude to detail. The depiction of the female’s skin also shocked onlookers: There are no rosy cheeks to give a sense of dimensionality, nor is her body given the fresh and dewy look of yore. Washed out and delineated with a strong, dark line, her pallor almost matches the bright, white sheets. Her facial features are a bit lop-sided, too, and while she perches on her bed, she doesn’t do so with graceful, come-hither appeal, but instead with a kind of belligerent “What are you looking at?” attitude. The jarring brightness of the central figure contrasts with the dark-skin of the courtesan’s maid, who can be seen bringing flowers to the bedside. INTERPRETATION: Olympia horrified the public. One reviewer of the Salon of 1867 (remarkably the jury accepted Manet’s painting for inclusion) described the painter as the “apostle of the ugly and repulsive.” The French public percieved Manet’s inclusion of both a black maid and a nude prostitue as evoking moral depravity, inferiority, and animalistic sexuality. The contrast of the black servant with the fair skinned courtesan also conjured racial divisions. DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS: Manet’s last painting was the Bar at Folies Bergere. He died from complications of Syphilis after his leg was amputated in 1884. Right after receiving the Legion of Honor. The Horse in Motion TITLE: Eadweard Muybridge ARTIST: United States LOCATION: PERIOD/STYLE: Realism/Photography DATE: 1878 PATRON: Leland Stanford MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE: Albumen print FORM: . In The Horse in Motion from 1878, Muybridge captured the movements of a horse at full gallop. Positioning a series of cameras with trip wires attached to their shutters, Muybridge was able to capture each movement at full speed. In the resulting grid formation of images, each of the horse’s movements constitutes a single frame, and the individual frames are placed alongside one another in progression. FUNCTION: In 1878, new advances decreased the exposure time to 1/25th of a second, allowing moving objects to be photographed and lessening the need for a tripod. This new development is celebrated in Eadweard Maybridge’s sequence of photographs called Galloping Horse (1878). Designed to settle the question of whether or not a horse ever takes all four legs completely off the ground during a gallop, the series of photographs also demonstrated the new photographic methods that were capable of nearly instantaneous exposure. CONTENT: The Horse in Motion was only one study of many in the Animal Locomotion Studies. Muybridge took pictures of all sorts of stuff: naked people walking around, naked people playing leapfrog, and more naked people doing somersaults. There was the occasional running buffalo and western landscape in the mix, but it’s clear he was drawn to the movements of the (naked) human form. That, or it was just easier to get people to cooperate. CONTEXT: Muybridge was commissioned by Leland Stanford, then the governor of California and later the founder of the self-named Stanford University. Stanford had made a bet that, while galloping, all four of a horse’s hooves left the ground at the same time. Muybridge set out to prove his benefactor correct and help him win the bet. His equine muse was Occident, a racing horse and Stanford’s first champion steed. The slow shutter speed of the current technology, as well as the inability to take photos in rapid succession, didn’t allow for photographing things in motion, so Muybridge worked with a system of triggers to take multiple photographs of the horse as it ran. INNOVATION/CONVENTION: Muybridge came under fire for staging the horse’s movement instead of actually capturing the horse in motion, but he snapped back by pointing out the shot in which each of the horse’s hooves were off the ground. The albumen print method he employed here was a relatively new technology, which, like all new technology, met by skepticism. Only two decades old by the time of Muybridge’s experiments, it was the first means by which one could commercially print a photograph on paper using a negative. Muybridge’s motion studies led to the creation of the “zoopraxiscope,” an apparatus for displaying images in motion, making this one of the earliest experiments in the motion picture technology. He proudly showed his zoopraxiscope at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago. ARTISTIC DECISIONS: This piece was the beginning of Muybridges photographic studies of the successive stages in human and animal motion--details too quick for the human eye to capture. These investigations culminated in 1885 at the University of Pennsylvania with a series of multiple camera motion studies that produced separate photographs of progressive moments in a single action. Muybridge published his scientific studies of animal and human locomotion in a book titled “Animal Locomotion” in 1887. Muybridge presentted his work to scientists and genreal audiences with a device called a zoopraxiscope which he invented to project his sequences of images. The result was the scientific discovery of the “persistence of vision” which gave birth to the motion picture industry. INTERPRETATION: DETAILS/TERMS/DEFINITIONS: Things were going swimmingly until Muybridge shot his wife’s lover and headed to court. He was acquitted, despite admitting to the crime, and after the trial, he left the country to spend a few years in Guatemala. Once the dust finally settled, he returned to San Francisco to resume his Animal Locomotion Studies, of which The Horse in Motion is a part.