Can Art be Universal?

There's no such thing as universality in art, says Stephen Greenblatt. We always create and read
from the perspective of our own time and place. What then accounts for the curious power some
works must communicate with us directly across the centuries?
What's the Big Idea?
If you’re a serious 16 year old, as I was, the greatness and universality of whatever music you
happen to love most (in my case, back then, the album Disintegration, by the Cure) is an article
of faith, as is the total lameness of the music that doesn’t speak to you at all (in my case, back
then, maybe MC Hammer).
I wince to recall making my parents listen to Disintegration from beginning to end, so certain
was I that it would speak to the very depths of their souls as it did to mine. Needless to say, it
probably didn’t.
Tastes differ, and tastes change, but anyone who’s invested in art, literature, or music has at
some point considered questions of universality:

What is it about a James Brown bassline that makes it nearly impossible not to dance (or at the
very least, awkwardly bob your head)?
Play the video and find out yourself. Galing, di ba?
Microsoft Stream
In 2012, nobody can resist dancing to Oppa Gangnam Style by Korean pop singer, Psy.
How can there still be full-time Shakespeare festivals all over the world, over 400 years after
Shakespeare’s death (and I’m not getting into the authorship question here, so don’t even
start . . . ).

Total relativism (“it’s all a matter of taste!”) is an unsatisfying and incomplete answer. Its
insufficiency becomes painfully apparent whenever school systems and universities debate
curriculum, making key decisions about which books are worth teaching and why. Historically
there was substantial agreement in the West about what constituted “Western Tradition.” Great
Books programs like St. John’s College and the University of Chicago taught (and some still
teach) Homer, Isaac Newton, Euclid, Kant (see here for a more comprehensive curriculum).
In recent decades the “Western Canon” has been under steady fire for leaving out women, people
of color, and the rest of the world, charges which are undeniably justified. Schools with “core
curriculums” have revised them, and given that there are only so many hours in a semester, that
inevitably means out with (some of) the old, in with the new. A little less Yeats, a little more
Toni Morrison.
Still, taking Toni Morrison (the book Beloved, in particular) as an example, the “new classics” in
literature are, it seems, held up to the same, difficult-to-pin down standards of universality as
were their predecessors. That is, no matter how grounded they are in the time, place, and culture
in which they were written, they must contain some powerful “human element” that can speak to
readers directly across space and time.
tephen Greenblatt, a literature scholar best known for his imaginative non-fictional accounts of
Shakespeare (Will in the World) and the rediscovery of Lucretius’ world-changing poem On the
Nature of Things (The Swerve), says that literature is never universal. It is always steeped in, and
can only fully be understood in light of the historical realities and mindsets of the writer’s
culture. And we read it from our own point of view and that of our times.
What then, Greenblatt wonders, accounts for the curious ability some books or poems have to
make us feel, centuries later, that the author is speaking directly to us? These near-universal
elements, he says, reside in the emotional content – situational or psychological realities that
don’t change much across the centuries, like the pain of unrequited love, and – perhaps as
important – in the power of the writer’s art. “What light through yonder window breaks? It is the
East – and Juliet is the sun!” says it better than “baby, I love you,” even in 2012.
What’s the Significance?
In 2012 the idea of a Great Books program, a core curriculum, even, frankly, of a museum seems
dusty and antiquated. Didn’t Andy Warhol (and Marcel Duchamp before him) do away with the
high/low distinction in art?
Fountain - a porcelain urinal displayed as art by Marcel Duchamp in 1917 (below image)

Maybe. But we’re still devoting an awful lot of time to evaluating what’s worthwhile and what
isn’t. Facebook, Twitter, and blog comment threads have resulted in a kind of popular critical
explosion, with insomniacs worldwide busy at 4 am rating and debating the merits of everything
imaginable, from the latest episode of American Idol to a silicone spatula. Even if we can’t agree
on anything, we obviously care – a lot.
Recently, the America's Got Talent Champions has put us on the edge of our seats with the entry
of our very own, Marcelito Pomoy.
When it comes to literature’s place in education, the debate will always be fierce and political,
but those works that lack some element of universality that gives them resonance beyond the
time and place of their creation won’t stay in the curriculum for long, because students simply
won’t read them. At the same time, once we’ve decided what to canonize (for the moment) we’re
wise to follow Greenblatt’s lead and dive deeply into the whole historical world of the work, and
experience the culture shock that reminds us it’s not all about us. That’s how we learn empathy
and protect ourselves from the folly of judging the past by the standards of the present.
web source: https://bigthink.com/how-to-think-like-shakespeare/can-art-be-universal

Art is not nature

Technically, nature is not art, because it was not created with the intention of pleasing people.
The etymological meaning of Art:
 Art – Aryan root AR meaning “join”, “put together”
 Two Greek verbs = artezein – “to prepare” arkiskein – “to put together”
 Latin term = ars, artis – everything made or composed by man
With this definition, we can conclude that art is not nature. Art is made by human beings. Artists
frequently find their inspiration and subject matter in nature, and artists do use nature as a
medium, but art itself not nature. Art is made by human beings, and no matter how close it is to
nature, it always shows that it was made by human beings.
The function of the artist is to help us understand the nature of things, to realize the possibilities
in the world, to develop insights or enlarge imagination by creating or revealing new subjects.
Art, in general, is either the making or the composition of any object useful for our human needs,
from a stone knife to a jet plane, or the arrangement of certain elements and qualities for the
contemplation and enjoyment of its meaning or beauty.
View of Bataan from Manila Bay, Fernando Amorsolo (1892-1972)

Art, therefore, is the skillful arrangement or composition of some common but significant
qualities of nature, such as colors, sounds, lines, movements, words, stones, wood, etc., to
express human feelings, emotions, or thoughts in a perfect, meaningful, and enjoyable way.

Art involves experience

Art and Experience
The arts constitute one of the oldest and most important means of expression developed by
human beings started from the prehistoric era. Thus, it is considered as a record of human
experience.
It has been said that art is experience, because all art demands experience; but probably it is
clearer to say that art involves experience, that there can be no appreciation of art without
experience.
When we say that art involves experience, we mean by experience just what we always mean by
the word: the actual doing of something.
Characteristics of Art Experience
1. The experience of art is personal and individual; it depends on what you are, what you
have inside you.
 2. Every artistic experience is accompanied by some emotion or emotional reactions.
“Do not expect to agree with everyone; all you can do is to be honest and straightforward”
“You like it or you do not like it ”
Watch this video from taken from YouTube. The Art Assignment Book Club features John
Dewey's Art As Experience. They talk about some of the big ideas Dewey talks about,
including what an art experience actually is, how aesthetics play into experiences, and...
Liverpool F.C.?
Watch this video where they talk about John Dewey's Art as Experience:
Art As Experience: Book Club #2 | The Art Assignment | PBS Digital Studios

Art as expression, as a form of creation

ART AS EXPRESSION
“What an artist does to an emotion is not to induce it, but express it. Through expression, he is
able to explore his own emotions and at the same time, create something beautiful out of them.”
– Robin George Collingwood
Expressing emotions is different from describing emotions.
This makes people’s art not a reflection of what is outside or external to them, but a reflection of
their inner selves.
Art is an expression of what it means to be human. What does it mean? Watch the rest of it in
this video.
Art is an expression of what it means to be human

VISUAL ARTS
 https://
images.app.goo.gl/96WsidrVDxYKK5xr5

Creations that fall under this category are those that appeals to the sense of sight and are mainly
visual in nature.
Artists produce visual arts driven by their desire to reproduce things that they have seen in the
way that they perceived them.
There are also other artistic disciplines that also involve a visual aspect, such as performance
arts, theater, and applied arts.
Some mediums of visual arts include paintings, drawings, letterings, printing, sculpture, digital
imaging.
FILM
 LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!
Film refers to the art of putting together successions of still images in order to create an illusion
of movement. Filmmaking focuses on its aesthetic, cultural, and social value and is considered
both an art and an industry.
Techniques in film-making process:
 Motion-picture camera (also known as movie camera)
 Animation techniques
 Computer-generated imagery (CGI)
Filmmaking simulates experiences or creates one that is beyond the scope of our imagination as
it aims to deliver ideas, feelings, or beauty to its viewers.
The history of Cinema:
The History of Cinema: Introduction
 PERFORMANCE ART

Performance art is a live art and the artist’s medium is mainly the human body which he or she
uses to perform, but also employs other kind of art such as visual art, props, or sound.
Elements of performance arts:
3. Time = Where the performance took place
4. The performer’s body = Relationship between the audience and the performer(s)
The fact that performance art is live makes it intangible, which means it cannot be bought or
traded as a commodity.
Watch these videos about performance art:
WHAT IS PERFORMANCE ART? With Kathryn Marshall

An Introduction to Performance Art | TateShots

Performance art relates to artworks that are created through actions performed by the artist or
other participants, which may be live or recorded, spontaneous or scripted. In the 1960s,
performance was seen as fundamentally different from the art that could be collected or shown
by art museums. It was live and ephemeral, challenging traditional notions of art. But today
performance has come to be seen as more a set of strategies available to contemporary artists,
one that is not inherently different from other art forms and not at all beyond what a museum can
and should show. Now an accepted part of the visual art world, the term has since been used to
also describe film, video, photographic and installation-based artworks through which the actions
of artists, performers or the audience are conveyed.

Mona Hatoum Performance Still 1985, 1995 Tate © Mona Hatoum

While the terms ‘performance’ and ‘performance art’ only became widely used in the 1970s, the
history of performance in the visual arts is often traced back to futurist productions and dada
cabarets of the 1910s.
Throughout the twentieth century performance was often seen as a non-traditional way of
making art. Live-ness, physical movement and impermanence offered artists alternatives to the
static permanence of painting and sculpture.
In the post-war period performance became aligned with conceptual art, because of its often
immaterial nature.
Now an accepted part of the visual art world, the term has since been used to also describe film,
video, photographic and installation-based artworks through which the actions of artists,
performers or the audience are conveyed.
More recently, performance has been understood as a way of engaging directly with social
reality, the specifics of space and the politics of identity. In 2016, theorist Jonah Westerman
remarked ‘performance is not (and never was) a medium, not something that an artwork can be
but rather a set of questions and concerns about how art relates to people and the wider social
world’.
web source: https://goo.gl/EaWiUi

POETRY PERFORMANCE
Poetry is an art form where the artist expresses his emotions not by using paint, charcoal, or
camera, but expresses them through words.
These words are carefully selected to exhibit clarity and beauty and to stimulate strong emotions
of joy, anger, love, sorrow among others.
It uses a word’s emotional, musical, and spatial values that go beyond its literal meaning to
narrate emphasize, argue, or convince.
These words combined with movements, tone, volume, and intensity of the delivery add to the
artistic, value of the poem.
An example of Poetry Performance: SUPERHERO - Spoken Word Poetry | Beverly Cumla
SUPERHERO - Spoken Word Poetry | Beverly Cumla

ARCHITECTURE
 Park Royal on Pickering St, Singapore, ABOVE photo.

Art is the pursuit and creation of beautiful things while architecture is the making of beautiful
buildings.
However, not all building are beautiful because some only embody the functionality they need,
but the structure, lines, forms, and colors are not beautifully expressed.
Important elements:
 Plan
 Construction
 Design
Buildings should embody these three important elements if they wish to merit the title
architecture.
Let us examine the Park Royal building on Pickering St in Singapore. Do you think it embodies
the three elements?
 DANCE
It really is this simple: Dance is the human body in motion.
In one form or another, dance is a part of our history.
The A-Z of Dance

 It is thought that early societies used dance to celebrate the planting and harvesting of
crops.
 Kings and Queens of the 16th century celebrated royal weddings with lavish spectacles
that included elaborate displays of dance.
 In the 19th century, people attended the theatre to watch dance as a way to escape their
harsh realities for a few hours.
 Today, along with numerous concert dance performances, the advertising, music video
and feature film industries continue to keep dance a part of our everyday lives.
Read about the origin of dance and the different dance styles in this file --> Dance.pdf
Dance is series of movements that follows the rhythm of the music accompaniment.
Dancing is a creative art form that allows people to freely express themselves.
It has no rules.
Choreography may seem not to allow this, but in art expression, dancers are not confined to set
steps and rules but are free to create and invent their own movements as longs as they deem them
graceful and beautiful.
Señorita - Shawn Mendes, Camilla Cabello | Caleb Marshall | Dance Workout
 LITERARY ART
Literary Art
Artists who practice literary arts use words to express themselves and communicate emotions to
the readers.
Simply becoming a writer does not make one a literary artist.
Literary art goes beyond the usual professional, academic, journalistic and other technical forms
of writing.
It focuses on writing using a unique style, not following a specific format or norm.
It may include both fiction and non-fiction such as novels, biographies, and poems.
 Romeo and Juliet – William Shakespeare
 The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Examples of literary art from https://sonyaheaneyblog.com/2012/09/09/literary-art-prints/

THEATER
Theater uses live performers to present accounts or imaginary events before a live audience.
Theater art performance usually follows follow a script, though they should not be confused with
literary arts.
Like in filmmaking, theater also considers several elements such as acting, gesture, lighting,
sound effects, musical score, scenery and props.
Like performance art, theater also is a live performance.
Genres: drama, musical, tragedy, comedy and improvisation
Before Western theater types became the norm in the Philippines, local theater actually took on
many different forms throughout the years!
5. Sarswela
6. Epic Poetry
7. Duplo
8. Moro-moro
9. Senakulo
10. Traditional Folk Dance
11. Bodabil
7 Types of Theater in the Philippines

APPLIED ARTS
Applied arts is incorporating elements of style and design to everyday items with the aim of
increasing their aesthetic value.
Artists in this field bring beauty, charm, and comfort into many things that were useful in
everyday life.
Industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, and the decorative arts all
belong to the realm of Applied arts.
Industrial Design
From the Volkswagen Beetle to the latest iPod, from the chair at your desk to the new Alpha
Romeo, industrial design is all around us. It aims to make our lives easier, to optimize function,
value and appearance guided by special requirements.

ABOVE photo: By Lothar Spurzem - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0 de,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40210670
Marrying function with form, design is as much an art as it is a part of engineering. It turns
purely mechanical objects into aesthetically pleasing items, it enhances their use and appeal.
Choice of materials must be considered, whether glass is more appropriate, metal or wood. A
design can make a new product "sink or swim" on the market - it can make it into a sleek,
aerodynamic image of luxury, or a clunky, ill-proportioned eye-sore.
Graphic Design
Graphic design arose as a separate discipline soon after the advent of the printing press in the
15th century. Engravings soon replaced hand-painted book illustration, and communication
through visual images started to gain momentum. Sign-painting was yet another early form of
graphic design, soon to be followed by poster painting in the 19th century (Toulouse-Lautrec and
Mucha spring to mind as the supreme masters of this genre), newspaper advertising, and
pamphlets.
Fashion Design
Possibly the most attractive to the general public and definitely the most discussed in the media,
fashion has been a hot topic for centuries. Still, design as we know it today started with Charles
Frederick Worth, the first who was able to dictate style instead of obey it. Before him, the
bourgeoisie and the common people simply copied the garments of their social superiors. The
court was the source of inspiration, not the runway. Yet it all changed with the advent of the
fashion house, the designer who could predict and dictate the trends. Soon came French Chanel
and Dior, Italian Gucci, Versace and many more.
Decorative Arts
From the lavishness of baroque to the severe directness of Bauhaus, each era has left its imprint
on the most diverse of all the applied arts. Materials used vary as much as the purpose both of
which, in turn, can make the item an affordable household utensil or an exquisite, jewel-
encrusted objet d'art. Often classified as mere "crafts", decorative arts serve a definite purpose of
embellishing everyday objects and enhancing their functionality.
Interior Design
Closely tied to architecture yet quite distinct from it, interior design fulfills our need to live in
beautiful surroundings. A multifaceted profession, it has to take into consideration everything
from architectural limits, practical matters such as health and safety concerns, as well as purely
aesthetic goals to (ideally) create an environment that is comfortable and pleasant to live in.
pplied arts - an Art or a Craft?
Through the centuries, through all the changes in taste, the question remains - is it art? How do
we see it, as serious or as disposable? Or is it, at the end, only important that it serves its very
practical and mundane purpose? Applied arts have long been a matter of debate but through it
all, they have remained an inseparable part of our existence, of our way of defining our place in
the world and making our lives as pleasant as possible. It is quite likely that they will remain so
for a long time to come.
Read more about it here (click link) The Variety of Applied Arts

MODULE 4:

What’s the difference between an artisan and an artist?

An artisan is essentially a manual worker who makes items with his or her hands, and who
through skill, experience and talent can create things of great beauty as well as being functional.
Before the industrial revolution virtually everything was made by artisans, from smiths
(goldsmiths, blacksmiths, locksmiths, gunsmiths) to weavers, dyers carpenters, potters, etc.

An artist on the other hand is dedicated only to the creative side, making visually pleasing work
only for the enjoyment and appreciation of the viewer, but with no functional value.

In Bali this distinction is often very blurred since many farmers paint, many sculptors farm or
have other jobs. Most walls are carved, most houses have decorative motifs. Art is everywhere.
To the Balinese the act of creation of beautiful things is second nature. All the ladies of a village
will make the amazing decorations for temples, and the elaborate offerings, thinking nothing of
spending three days making things which will be only used for a few hours. In western society it
would be very unusual to expect such talent to be exercised throughout society. Enjoy these
marvelous skills while you are in Bali – and perhaps take home some art or artifacts with you as
a reminder. If you know the difference! This is what separates Bali from the rest of the industrial
world. It’s a place where the ‘Artistic License’ has not been separated from the Artisan. Talent is
practiced across society on a daily basis. It provides an age-old connection to historical purpose
through a plethora of cultural traditions.

The Different Job Roles In Art

ARTIST
An artist is a person who is engaged in the activity of creating, practicing or demonstrating art,
working with visual techniques, such as composition, colour, space and perspective to produce
the desired effect. This could be in the form of installations, sculptures, paintings, drawings,
pottery, performances, dance, photography, video, film and any other medium. Artists may also
combine a number of different mediums into their work referred to as mixed media. Artists tend
to create their own pieces for sale directly to the public or through an intermediary such as a
gallery or an agent. Artists can also be commissioned by a client, gallery or organisation to
produce a piece of work, and may also run art classes or be involved with community art
projects.

Skills required: creativity, imagination, and business, marketing and financial awareness.

ART AGENT
An art agent represents an artist working on their behalf to promote and sell their work. The role
involves negotiating individual sales, commissions, licensing deals, as well as organizing
publicity, and seeking opportunities such as teaching and workshops.

Skills required: Negotiation and financial acumen, communication and networking, awareness of
art trends, and marketing and PR.

A discussion with Art Agent Nigel Rhodes about what an agent does, the benefits of buying and
selling on consignment, and the differences between buying and selling privately as opposed to
going through the auction rooms.

ART CONSULTANT/ ADVISOR

Art consultants also known as art advisors act as an intermediary between artists, galleries and
auction houses, and buyers by helping people such as art collectors select and acquire art for
their home, business, or collection as well as help them sell pieces they no longer require.

Skills required: A great eye for art, negotiation, communication and listening, sales, finances and
taxes.

ART DEALER
An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art with aim of making a profit.
A dealer may present artwork and might sponsor his artists fully for mutual benefits. In such
case, it works well for artists who accept to work as employees not as free individuals for he/she
is asked what to paint within a given time. Dealer has a secondary market; first market is
targeting artists with certain artwork, second; is targeting art buyers with his collection to get
best prices possible.

Skills required: A great eye for art, awareness of trends, negotiation, communication and
networking, sales, finances.

ART AUCTIONER
An art auctioneer works on behalf of their clients to sells pieces of art for the highest possible
price. The art auctioneer is responsible for setting the price of the artwork. Art auctioneers need
to be active in the arts by attending art exhibitions at galleries and museums, as well as attending
art lectures and other related professional events.

Skills required: Art history relevant to their area of expertise, research, valuation, marketing and
business, interpersonal skills

ART VALUER
Similar to an art auctioneer an art valuer gives advice on how much a work of art or a collection
of art is worth. An like art auctioneers, art valuers need to be active in the arts by attending art
exhibitions at galleries and museums, as well as attending art lectures and other related
professional events.

Skills required: Research, art history, communication, financial, and an eye for detail.

GALLERY OWNER/MANAGER
A gallery owner or manager chooses and presents art for sale. Galleries may specialize in
specific areas. A gallery owner or manager’s responsibilities include managing both the creative
and business sides of running an art gallery, as well as organizing and exhibitions, private sales
and loaning out art. A galleriste is the person who represents and promotes artists in primary art
market, the one with an exhibition space to offer and who raises relationships with collectors and
art organizers. He/she might own an actual building called a gallery or online gallery to present
artists.

Skills required: An eye for art, creative flair, an awareness of trends, business, financial,
marketing, sales, negotiation and communication.

CURATOR
A curator is in charge of a collection of exhibits in a museum or art gallery, and is responsible for
assembling, cataloguing, managing, presenting and displaying artworks, cultural collections and
artifacts. Curator can also deliver public talks, publish articles as he/she has the knowledge of the
current collecting market for their area of expertise and are aware of existing ethical practices
and laws that may impact their organization's collection. Generally speaking, a curator prefers to
work with a small group of artists and creates variety of presentations.
Skills required: research, art/cultural history and awareness, organisation, project management,
communication, presenting and creative flair.

ART CONSERVATORS
Art conservators are responsible for restoring, preserving and analyzing artifacts and works of
art. Art conservators tend to specialize in particular types of objects or materials such as books,
paintings, sculptures or textiles.

Skills required: Research, art and cultural history, fine art, writing and analytical.

ART HISTORIAN
Art historians study art created in the past by individuals, learning about artists’ lives and their
societies, and seeking to interpret and understand these works of art for the preservation of future
generations.

Skills required: Research, art and cultural history, fine art, writing and analytical.

ART CRITIC
An art critic specializes in interpreting, analyzing and evaluating art. Art critics produce written
critiques or reviews that are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures
and catalogues and well as on websites. Art critics are highly influential and can make or break
careers with their words.

Skills required: Observation, writing and editing, analytical, objective and research.

ART COLLECTOR
An art collector is the person who loves certain pieces of art/paintings and collect art not
necessary to sell later but the chance is there. He/she is also called an art lover with possibility of
having a personal project in mind for his/her collection in the future, such as having own
museum or use/rent the collection for films/movies and TV shows, etc.

PAINTING TECHNIQUES
 1. Oil
Capable of capturing even the most nuanced details shadowed amidst light and dark, oil is the
paint of history. Oil paint is made with natural pigments, linseed oil and turpentine, making it
recognizable in sight and smell. The main downside is that it can take up to nine months to dry
completely and even years for heavy impasto (texture).

Oil paint usage can be traced back in origin to the 5th century in Asia, broadening the scale of its
beauty when introduced to European traders in the 15th century. The Old Masters like Leonardo
da Vinci, Rembrandt van Rijn and Francisco Goya used oil as a tool to evoke sentiments of
agony, ecstasy and poetry. Modern artists seeking color saturation, versatility and subtle
illumination, prefer to use oil paint. These include Park West Gallery artists Duaiv, Csaba
Markus, Emile Bellet, Maya Green, Slava Ilyavev, Michael Milkin, and Hua Chen.

2. Water Color
Watercolor was initially developed in Asia during the 8th century to be laid on fine silks and
woven paper. The paints slowly made their way to Byzantium and Europe in the 14th century,
placing its aesthetic hold onto illuminated manuscripts, and later rendered itself to the gossamer
aesthetic of the French Impressionists.

Watercolor paint uses ground pigments mixed with water-soluble binders. Watercolor painting
lends itself to a gradient of tonal hues that can imitate the washes of sky and sea, but it is
considered one of the most difficult mediums to master, as it doesn’t lend itself to correction
after application. Many consider Itzchak Tarkay (1935-2012) to be an especially gifted
watercolorist who awed viewers with his technique.

3. Acrylic
Made commercially available only as recent as the 1950s, acrylic is paint that binds its pigment
with a synthetic resin. Acrylics are water soluble during application, yet water-resistant when
dry, making them easy to blend and fast-drying.

Unlike its oil-infused predecessor, acrylic paint emerged in the era of advertising, graphic design
and glossy, cosmopolitan editorials. Therefore, by association, acrylic paints are vibrantly hued,
eye-catching and possess an advertent pop of bright ceruleans and magentas. No surprise that
creators of pop art like Peter Max, Simon Bull, Romero Britto and Andy Warhol brought acrylic
paint into celebrity.
 SPRAY TECHNIQUES

1. Giclée
Giclée (pronounced gee-clay) printing is the art medium of “now,” fusing together traditions of
realism and digital innovation. A French term, translating into “the spraying of ink,” giclées
aren’t simply printed reproductions; rather, they’re the result of obsessive digital fine-tuning and
modification, and are able to capture great photorealistic detail. The process begins with a high
resolution photograph of the artwork being translated into giclée form. The image is then
scanned, turned into a digital source file, color corrected, printed, revised, reprinted – and subject
to constant adjustment until the artist is satisfied with the printed product.

Artists liked Pino, Andrew Bone, Scott Jacobs, Autumn de Forest, and many more have utilized
giclées for their limited edition artworks.

2. Dye Sublimation
Dye sublimation is one of Park West Gallery’s latest and most innovative mediums. Dye
sublimation is the digital printing process that transfers imagery onto materials such as metal,
glass and plastic. The concept is based on sublimation, which is when a substance changes from
a solid to a gas without becoming a liquid. The original image is rendered into a digital matrix, or
map, and from there the artist has complete control over how the colors will appear on the final
work of art. Lastly, the mapped image is printed onto transfer paper using dye-based inks, and
then transferred onto a specially coated aluminum plate with heat and pressure.

Dye sublimation works are renowned for achieving striking and crisp detail and vivid luminosity.
Artists such as Michael Cheval, Guy Harvey and Yuval Wolfson utilize the technique.

SURFACE TECHNIQUES
1. Litography
Lithography, or “stone writing,” is a printmaking process where images are inked and
pressed on slabs of stone. Lithography was heavily utilized by 19th and 20th century artists like
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Marc Chagall and Marcel Mouly. Revered for its capability to
produce atmospheric, delicate colors and soft tonalities, lithography lends itself to a painterly
aesthetic.
Based on the antipathy of water and oil, the lithographic process begins by drawing an
image, in reverse, on a stone using a greasy crayon or liquid form called a tusche. The stone is
treated with water, which adheres to all areas except those drawn with the crayon. Lastly, a layer
of ink is rolled onto the stone, which is repelled by the water and sticks only to the greasy drawn
or painted areas. Paper is then placed on the surface and pressed, transferring the ink to paper.
This process must be completed separately for each color on each example. In fact, it can take
months to finish an edition of lithographs.

2. Serigraphy
From applying images to T-Shirts, stenciling holiday cards or even airbrushing, we’ve all
dabbled in serigraphy, or its common iteration, screen printing. Don’t let this familiarity trick
you, however, as fine art serigraphy is a time-consuming and physically demanding medium.

In serigraphy, stencils are adhered to a porous polymer screen and tightly stretched around a
frame. Paper is then placed under the screen, and ink is applied to the top of the screen and
layered across the entire surface with the aid of a squeegee. Like lithography, a separate stencil
or matrix is created for each color, which requires a patient and precise eye. Serigraphy creates
images of striking texture, decisive lines and sharp colors. Artists like Erte, Tarkay and Yaacov
Agam are among the innovators of the medium.

3. Serio-litography
As the name suggests, serio-lithography is a hybrid medium, incorporating characteristics of both
serigraphy and lithography. Artworks that utilize this technique are initially inked and pressed on
a lithography plate and then enhanced with one or more serigraphic screens. By combining these
two graphic techniques, serio-lithographs are appreciated for their vivid colors, tonal depth, and
texture.

INTAGLIO TECHNIQUES

1. Etching
Etching is a laborious and painstakingly detail-oriented medium. Old masters such as
Rembrandt van Rijn and Francisco Goya heavily utilized the medium to achieve awe-inspiring
images.
Creating an etching begins with covering a metal plate with an acid-resistant ground. The
image being printed is then scratched into the ground with a fine tool, exposing the metal plate
beneath. The plate is then submerged into an acid bath, burning away at the exposed metal – the
longer the plate is submerged, the deeper the impressed lines became. Once removed from the
bath, the plate is inked, the surface is cleaned so that ink is only residing in the incisions and
moistened paper is pressed into the paper, extracting the ink and creating the mirror image of the
composition.
Fun Fact: Though most commonly recognized for his achievements in painting, historical
records indicate that Rembrandt carried and scratched on an etching plate like one would
casually doodle in a sketch pad!

2. Engraving
Engraving, like etching, requires a patient hand and keen eye for detail. However, unlike etching,
engraving uses cutting tools to incise lines directly into the surface of a metal plate – no acids are
employed or grounds used to treat the plate. This means a precise technique is needed to print a
successful impression. The plate is then inked and pressed against paper, to create a mirrored
version of the engraving. Albrecht Durer preferred the technique, creating some of the most
intricate engravings of all time.

RELIEF TECHNIQUES

Relief printing is done as you would imagine pressing a rubber stamp, however, the
process for creating a relief matrix is comprehensive and requires a clean design. Relief
techniques are essentially the opposite of the intaglio techniques described previously, which
mean that the image’s negative areas are cut away with a knife or chisel, leaving the image to
reside on the surface level once inked. Like many forms of printing, the final image is the reverse
image of the matrix. Examples of relief techniques include wood cuts and linocuts, where the
relief is chiseled onto a block of wood in the former and a sheet of linoleum in the latter.

GAMABA, National Artists

In April 1992, the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA) or the National Living Treasures
Award was institutionalized through Republic Act No. 7355.

Tasked with the administration and implementation of the Award is the National Commission for
Culture and the Arts (NCCA), the highest policy-making and coordinating body for culture and
the arts of the State.

The NCCA, through the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan Committee and an Ad Hoc Panel of
Experts, conducts the search for the finest traditional artists of the land, adopts a program that
will ensure the transfer of their skills to others and undertakes measures to promote a genuine
appreciation of and instill pride among our people about the genius of the Manlilikha ng Bayan.

Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan or National Living Treasures award is conferred on Filipinos

who are at the forefront of the practice preservation, and promotion of the nation's traditional
folk arts.

Formalized in 1992, through RA No. 7355, the Manlilikha ng Bayan Act The National
Commission for the Culture and the Arts oversees its implementation. The award is tied with a
program that ensures the transfer of their skills to new generations and the promotion of the craft
both locally and internationally.

In 2014, the Senate of the Philippines adopted Senate Resolution No. (SRN) 765 aimed at
recognizing the accomplishments of the country's living treasures.
The award logo is a representation of the human form used in traditional cloth. Below the logo is
the phrase "Manlilikha ng Bayan" written in Baybayin, an ancient Filipino script used in the
Philippines in the 16th century.

Definition of Terms:
Gawad ng Manlilikha ng Bayan - meaning of GAMABA
GAMABA - Acknowledges folk and indigenous artists, who despite the modern times, remain
true to their traditions.
National Artist Award - Highest form of recognition to Filipino artists. Give credit to those
who dedicated their lives to forge new paths and directions for future generations of Filipino
artist. Promote creative expression as significant to the development of a national cultural
identity.
NCAA - National Commission for Culture and the Arts
GAMABA AWARDEES:

GINAW, BILOG
 -Poet, Hanunuo Mangyan Panaytayan, OrientalMindoro (1993)
 Ambahan –is a kind of poem consisting of seven syllable lines which most of the time
contains messages of love and friendship.
 A common cultural aspect among cultural communities nationwide is the oral tradition
characterized by poetic verses which are either sung or chanted. However, what
distinguishes the rich Mangyan literary tradition from others is the ambahan, a poetic
literary form composed of seven-syllable lines used to convey messages through
metaphors and images.
 The ambahan is sung and its messages range from courtship, giving advice to the young,
asking for a place to stay, saying goodbye to a dear friend and so on. Such an oral
 tradition is commonplace among indigenous cultural groups but the ambahan has
remained in existence today chiefly because it is etched on bamboo tubes using ancient
Southeast Asian, pre-colonial script called surat Mangyan.
 Ginaw Bilog, Hanunoo Mangyan from Mansalay, Mindoro, grew up in such a cultural
environment. Already steeped in the wisdom that the ambahan is a key to the
understanding of the Mangyan soul, Ginaw took it upon himself to continually keep
scores of ambahan poetry recorded, not only on bamboo tubes but on old, dog-eared
notebooks passed on to him by friends. Most treasured of his collection are those
inherited from his father and grandfather, sources of inspiration and guidance for his
creative endeavors.

MASINO INTIRAY
 Musician and Storyteller, Pala’wan Brookes Point, Palawan (1993)
 A musician and a poet whose Expertise were the Basal, Kulilal, and Bagit.
 Living in the highlands of southern Palawan are the Palawan people, who, together with
the Batak and Tagbanwa, are the major indigenous cultural communities of Palawan.
 The Palawan possess a rich, intense yet highly refined culture encompassing both the
visible and invisible worlds. They may not exhibit the ornate splendor of the Maranaw
nor the striking elegance of the Yakan, but their elaborate conemology, extensive poetic
and literary traditions, multi-level architecture, musical concepts, social ethic and rituals
reveal a deeply spiritual sensibility and subtle inner life of a people attuned to the myriad
energies and forms of luxurious mountain universe that is their abode, a forest
environment of great trees, countless species of plants and animals, and a magnificent
firmament.
 The Palawan have no notion of property. To them, the earth, sea, sky and nature’s
elements belong to no one. Their basic social ethic is one sharing. Their most important
rituals such as the tambilaw and the tinapay are forms of vast and lavish sharing,
particularly of food and drinks, skills and ideas.
 SAMAON
SULAIMAN
 Musician, Mamasapano, Maguindanao (1993)
 Master in playing the kutyapi, a 2-stringed plucked lute.
 The Magindanaon, who are among the largest of Filipino Islamic groups, are
concentrated in the towns of Dinaig, Datu Piang, Maganoy and Buluan in Magindanao
province. Highly sophisticated in weaving, okir designs, jewelry, metalwork and
brassware, their art is Southeast Asian yet distinct in character.
 In the field of music, the Magindanaon have few peers among Filipino cultural
communities. Their masters on the kulintang (gong-chime) and kutyapi (two-stringed
plucked lute) are comparable to any instrumental virtuoso in the East or West.
 The kutyapi is a favorite solo instrument among both Muslim and non-Muslim Filipinos,
and is also played in combination with other instruments. It exists in a great variety of
designs, shapes and sizes and known by such names as kotapi (Subanon), fegereng
(Tiruray), faglong (B’laan), hegelong (T’boli) and kuglong or kudlong (Manobo).
 LANG DULAY
 Textile weaver, T’boli, Lake Sebu, South Cotabato
 Tnalak –a kind of fabric made up of fine abaca fibers weaved with different designs
which reflect the traditions of the Tboli.
 Using abaca fibers as fine as hair, Lang Dulay speaks more eloquently than words can.
Images from the distant past of her people, the Tbolis, are recreated by her nimble hands
– the crocodiles, butterflies and flowers, along with mountains and streams, of Lake
Sebu, South Cotabato, where she and her ancestors were born – fill the fabric with their
longing to be remembered. Through her weaving, Lang Dulay does what she can to keep
her people’s tradition alive.
 There are a few of them left, the traditional weavers of the tnalak or Tboli cloth. It is not
hard to see why: weaving tnalak is a tedious process that begins with stripping the stem
of the abaca plant to get the fibers, to coaxing even finer fibers for the textile, then drying
the threads and tying each strand by hand. Afterwards, there is the delicate task of setting
the strands on the “bed-tying” frame made of bamboo, with an eye towards deciding
which strands should be tied to resist the dye. It is the bud or tying of the abaca fibers that
defines the design.
 SALINTA MONON
 Textile Weaver, Tagabawa Bagobo, Bansalan, Davao del Sur
 Salinta Monon started learning weaving traditional Bagobo textiles from her mother at
the age of 12. Her family is among the remaining Bagobo weavers in the community.
 Practically, since she was born, Salinta Monon had watched her mother’s nimble hands
glide over the loom, weaving traditional Bagobo textiles. At 12 she presented herself to
her mother, to be taught how to weave herself. Her ardent desire to excel in the art of her
ancestors enabled her to learn quickly. She developed a keen eye for traditional designs,
and now, at the age of 65, she can identify the design as well as the author of a woven
piece just by a glance.
 All her life she has woven continuously, through her marriage and six pregnancies, and
even after her husband’s death 20 years ago. She and her sister are the only remaining
Bagobo weavers in her community.
 Her husband paid her parents a higher bride price because of her weaving skills.
However, he left all the abaca gathering and stripping to her. Instead, he concentrated on
making their small farm holding productive. Life was such that she was obliged to help
out in the farm, often putting her own work aside to make sure the planting got done and
the harvest were brought in. When her husband died, she was left alone with a farm and
six children, but she continued with her weaving, as a source of income as well as pride.
 ALONZO SACLAG
 Musician and Dancer, Lubugan, Kalinga
 A master of dance and performing arts. He has also mastered the dance patterns and
movements associated with his people’s ritual.
 History, they say, is always written from the perspective of the dominant class. It is not as
objective an account as we were led to believe when, as elementary schoolchildren, we
were made to memorize the details of the lives of Jose Rizal and the other notable
ilustrados. History is about as impartial as the editorials we eagerly devour today, the
ones that extol and chastise the exploits and the foibles of government, but with a distinct
advantage: by virtue of its form, it takes on an aura of authority. And this authority is one
ordinary schoolchildren and adults alike are hardly likely to challenge.
 Seemingly maligned by both history and popular media are the people of the Kalinga.
Even in the earliest Spanish Chronicles, they were depicted as so hostile that Dominican
missionaries were forced to abandon their plans to build Christian missions in the area.
Their more recent battle against the Marcos administration’s plans to build a series of
hydroelectric dams along the Chico River only added to their notoriety. The very name
they have taken on was a label tagged on to them by the neighboring Ibanag and
Gaddang. It meant “enemy” – a throwback, no doubt, to the days when head taking was a
common and noble practice, intended not only to demonstrate bravery but, more
importantly, to safeguard lives and property.
 FREDERICO
CABALLERO
 Epic Chanter, Sulod-Bukidnon, Calinog, Iloilo
 Work for the documentation of the oral literature, Particularly the epics of his People.
 Stories are the lifeblood of a people. In the stories people tell lies a window to what they
think, believe, and desire. In truth, a people’s stories soundly encapsulate the essence of
their humanity. And this circumstance is not peculiar to any one group. It is as a thread
that weaves through the civilizations of the ancient East and the cultures of the industrial
West.
 So significant is the role they play that to poison a people’s stories, says African writer
Ben Okri, is to poison their lives. This truth resonates in the experience of many. In the
folklore of the Tagalog people, tales abound of a mythical hero who, once freed from
imprisonment in a sacred mountain, would come to liberate the nation. The crafty
Spaniards seized upon this myth and used it as a tool for further subjugation. They harped
on it, enshrining it in the consciousness of every Tagalog, dangling this legendary
champion in front of their eyes as one would the proverbial carrot. So insidious was this
myth that suffering in silence and waiting for deliverance became a virtue. And for a
time, it lulled the people into a false sense of hope, smothering all desire to rise up in
arms.
 UWANG AHADAS
 Musician, Yakan Lamitan, Basilan
 Is a Yakan, a people to whom instrumental music is closely connected to the spiritual
realm.
 Much mystery surrounds life. And when confronted with such, it is but natural to attempt
some form of hypothesizing. In the days when hard science was nonexistent, people
sought to explain away many of these enigmas by attributing them to the work of the
gods or the spirits. In this way, rain and thunder became the lamentations of a deity
abandoned by his capricious wife, and night and day, the compromise reached by a
brother and sister who both wanted to rule the world upon the death of their father.
 Many of these heavenly beings hold sway over the earth and all that dwell within its
bounds. In the folklore of a northern people, a story explains why, in the three-kilometer
stretch of the highest peak of Binaratan, a mountain in the region, there is a silence so
complete it borders on the eerie. Legend has it that the great Kaboniyan went hunting
with some men to teach them how to train and use hounds. When they reached the peak
of Binaratan, however, they could no longer hear their hounds as the song of the birds
drowned their barking. One of the hunters begged Kaboniyan to stop the birds’ singing,
lest the hunt fail and they return home empty-handed. So Kaboniyan commanded the
creatures of Binaratan to be silent in a voice so loud and frightful that they kept their
peace in fear. Since then, a strange unbroken silence reigns at the top of the mountain, in
spite of the multitudes of birds that flit from tree to tree.
 DARHATA
SAWABI
 Textile Weaver, Tausug, Parang, Sulu
 Weaving the Pis Syabit , the traditional cloth tapestry worn as a head covering by the
Tausug of Jolo.
 In Barangay Parang, in the island of Jolo , Sulu province, women weavers are hard at
work weaving the pis syabit, the traditional cloth tapestry worn as a head covering by the
Tausug of Jolo. “This is what we’ve grown up with,” say the weavers. “It is something
we’ve learned from our mothers.” Darhata Sawabi is one of those who took the art of pis
syabit making to heart.
 The families in her native Parang still depend on subsistence farming as their main source
of income. But farming does not bring in enough money to support a family, and is not
even an option for someone like Darhata Sawabi who was raised from birth to do only
household chores. She has never married. Thus, weaving is her only possible source of
income.
 EDUARDO
MUTUC
 Metal smith, Kapampangan, Apalit, Pampanga
 Creating religious and secular art in silver, bronze and wood.
 Eduardo Mutuc is an artist who has dedicated his life to creating religious and secular art
in silver, bronze and wood. His intricately detailed retablos, mirrors, altars, and carosas
are in churches and private collections. A number of these works are quite large, some
exceeding forty feet, while some are very small and feature very fine and delicate
craftsmanship.
 For an artist whose work graces cathedrals and churches, Mutuc works in humble
surroundings. His studio occupies a corner of his yard and shares space with a tailoring
shop. During the recent rains, the river beside his lot overflowed and water flooded his
studio in Apalit, Pampanga, drenching his woodblocks. Mutuc takes it all in stride.
 HAJA AMINA
APPI
 Mat Weaver, Sama Tandubas, Tawi-Tawi 2004
 The mat weaving is one of the treasured traditions of the Sama People.
 Their mat is made up of pandan leaves w/c undergo tedious processes from stripping, to
sun dying, to dyeing up to weaving.
 Haja Amina Appi of Ungos Matata, Tandubas, Tawi-Tawi, is recognized as the master
mat weaver among the Sama indigenous community of Ungos Matata. Her colorful mats
with their complex geometric patterns exhibit her precise sense of design, proportion and
symmetry and sensitivity to color. Her unique multi-colored mats are protected by a plain
white outer mat that serves as the mat’s backing. Her functional and artistic creations take
up to three months to make.
 The art of mat weaving is handed down the matrilateral line, as men in the Sama culture
do not take up the craft. The whole process, from harvesting and stripping down the
pandan leaves to the actual execution of the design, is exclusive to women. It is a long
and tedious process, and requires much patience and stamina. It also requires an eye for
detail, an unerring color instinct, and a genius for applied mathematics.
 TEOFILO GARCIA
 Casque maker, Ilokano, San Quintin, Abra. 2012
 He makes Tabungaw , the gourd hat he makes and wears, is uniquely distinct in
craftsmanship.
 Each time Teofilo Garcia leaves his farm in San Quintin, Abra, he makes it a point to
wear a tabungaw. People in the nearby towns of the province, in neighboring Sta. Maria
and Vigan in Ilocos Sur, and as far as Laoag in Ilocos Norte sit up and take notice of his
unique, functional and elegant headpiece that shields him from the rain and the sun. A
closer look would reveal that it is made of the native gourd, hollowed out, polished, and
varnished to a bright orange sheen to improve its weather resistance. The inside is lined
with finely woven rattan matting, and the brim sports a subtle bamboo weave for accent.
 Because he takes pride in wearing his creations, Teofilo has gotten many orders as a
result. Through his own efforts, through word of mouth, and through his own
participation in an annual harvest festival in his local Abra, a lot of people have
discovered about the wonders of the tabungaw as a practical alternative. Hundreds have
sought him out at his home to order their own native all-weather headgear. His clients
have worn his work, sent them as gifts to their relatives abroad, and showed them off as a
masterpiece of Filipino craftsmanship. With the proper care, a well-made tabungaw can
last up to three to four generations, and the ones created by Teofilo are among the best
there are. They are so sturdy that generally, farmers need to own only one at a time. Even
Teofilo and his son only own one tabungaw each.
 MAGDALENA
GAMAYO
 Textile weaver, Ilokano, Pinili, Ilocos Norte 2012
 Abel –the textile weaving of Ilokano from local Cotton and other fibers.
 The Ilocos Norte that Magdalena Gamayo knows is only a couple of hours drive away
from the capital of Laoag, but is far removed from the quickening pulse of the emergent
city. Instead, it remains a quiet rural enclave dedicated to rice, cotton and tobacco crops.
2012 Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan awardee, Magdalena Gamayo still owes a lot to the
land and the annual harvest. Despite her status as a master weaver, weaving alone is not
enough.
 Also, even though the roads are much improved, sourcing quality cotton threads for her
abel is still a challenge. Even though the North is known for its cotton, it does not have
thread factories to spin bales of cotton into spools of thread. Instead, Magdalena has to
rely on local merchants with their limited supplies. She used to spin her own cotton and
brushed it with beeswax to make it stronger, but after the Second World War, she now
relies on a market-bought thread. She still remembers trading rice for thread, although
those bartering days are over. A thread is more expensive nowadays and of poorer
quality. Often, she has had to reject samples but often she has little choice in the matter.
 There are less local suppliers of thread nowadays, a sign that there is less demand for
their wares, but nonetheless, the abel-weaving tradition in Ilocos remains strong, and
there are no better artists who exemplify the best of Filipino abel weaving tradition than
Magdalena Gamayo.
 AMBALANG
AUSALIN
 Master weaver
 Lamitan, Basilan
 Weaving (Yakan tennun), 2016
 born 4 March 1943
 The Yakan of Basilan are known to be among the finest weavers in the Southern
Philippines. They create eye-catching and colorful textiles with tiny motifs, and possess
techniques wielded only by seasoned weavers accomplishing designs restricted for
utilization within a certain weaving category only.
 Weaving is an extremely important craft in the Yakan community. All Yakan women in
the past were trained in weaving. Long ago, a common practice among the Yakan was
that, when a female was born, the pandey, traditional midwife, would cut the umbilical
cord using a wooden bar called bayre (other Yakan pronounce this as beyde). That bar
was used for ‘beating-in’ the weft of the loom. By thus severing of the umbilical cord, it
was believed that the infant would grow up to become an accomplished weaver. This, and
all other aspects of the Yakan weaving tradition, is best personified by a seventy-three-
year-old virtuoso from the weaving domicile of the Yakan in Parangbasak, Lamitan City:
Ambalang Ausalin.
 YABING
MASALON DULO
 Master weaver
 Polomolok, South Cotabato Weaving (Ikat), 2016
 born 8 August 1914
 A century Yabing Dulo believes herself older than ninety. Her identity card marks that
age, however, and date of birth, the fourteenth of August supposedly 1910. Since the
venerable ikat-dyer has a memory sharper than blades, it seems always best to follow her
counsel. She does know for a fact that she was born in a place already called Landan in
that long ago time. The exact sitio was and is still named Amgu-o, a settlement of a few
related families within Landan, today a barangay, a constituent unit of a town. During the
early twentieth century, Amgu-o was a cluster of houses thoroughly unconnected to the
national political organization. It was a hilly, forested place where streams were
punctuated by all sizes of rocks. The trees, then, were ancient.
 Now ancient as well — accepting the honorific Fu, elder, with no hauteur — Fu Yabing
has lived long enough to have seen Amgu-o emerge as an exposed, dry place sans those
trees. Her thatch-wood-concrete domicile speaks of a permanence unconnected to the
archaic system of shifting agriculture that gave its practitioners to move entire hamlets
following the obligation to regenerate soil after extended use; giving that land back to the
forest.
 ESTELITA
BANTILAN
 Master weaver
 Malapatan, Sarangani
 Mat weaving (B'laan igem or mat) 2016
 born 17 October 1940
 She was at birth, seventy-two years ago, Labnai Tumndan. It was a recognizable name in
the language, Blaan, spoken in the montane hamlet of Mlasang. Her extended family
reckoned their place in relation to the mlasang, a tree that, once a year, flowers profusely,
sheds the inflorescences immediately, and carpets abode and environment in
magnificence all at once.
 Mid-twentieth century in what are now the Mindanao provinces of Sarangani and South
Cotabato, Blaan speakers — also called Blaan, like their language — took on the slow
beginning of village life of some permanence. Their forebears had for centuries shifted
domiciles systematically to regenerate land cultivated to wild rice and yams. Around the
time of Labnai’s childhood, the small community understood their link to the Philippine
political system to be vested in the new identity of Mlasang as Upper Lasang, a barangay
of the municipality of Malapatan, in a province called Cotabato. Shortly after, this
province was subdivided and Malapatan was absorbed into the new province of
Sarangani.

18th and 19th Centuries

Welcome to two centuries of art movement. In this era, we will discover the many
changes in the art world. You will learn about:
12.Rococo
13.the Age of Enlightenment (which encompasses the advancements in the
sciences and Neoclassicism)
14.Romanticism
15.Modernism
16.the entry of photographs, and
17.Impressionism

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, oil on canvas, 1767

Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, oil on canvas, 1784

Édouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, oil on canvas, 1882

William Henry Fox Talbot, The Open Door, 1844, Salted paper print from paper
negative

Claude Monet, Impression Sunrise, 1872

Paul Cézanne, Les joueurs de carte, 1892

The Beginnings of Rococo (1720-1760)

The Beginnings of Rococo

In the early years of the 1700s, at the end of the reign of Louis XIV (who dies in
1715), there was a shift away from the classicism and “Grand Manner” (based on
the art of Poussin) that had governed the art of the preceding 50 years, toward a
new style that we call Rococo.
Rococo: a style of art and decoration characterized by lightness, elegance, pastel
colors, grace, playfulness, and intimacy that emerged in France in the early
eighteenth century and spread across Europe, principally Germany and Austria,
until the late eighteenth century.

French Rococo chairs by Louis Delanois (1731–92); in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris.

Image: Courtesy of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris; photograph by Eddy van der Veen

The word Rococo is derived from the French word rocaille, which denoted the
shell-covered rock work that was used to decorate artificial grottoes.

At the outset the Rococo style represented a reaction against the ponderous
design of Louis XIV’s (right photo) Palace of Versailles and the official Baroque
art of his reign. Though primarily an interior design movement, artists in painting
and sculpture moved away from the serious subject matter of the Baroque. When
the Enlightenment occurred in France, the Rococo came under fire because it
was deemed to have no intellectual underpinning.
Versailles was abandoned by the aristocracy, who once again took up residence in
Paris. A shift away from the monarchy, toward the aristocracy characterizes this
period.
What kind of lifestyle did the aristocracy lead during this period?
Remember that the aristocracy had enormous political power as well as enormous
wealth. Many chose leisure as a pursuit and became involved themselves in
romantic intrigues. Indeed, they created a culture of luxury and excess that formed
a stark contrast to the lives of most people in France. The aristocracy, only a small
percentage of the population of France, owned over 90% of its wealth. A small, but
growing middle class does not sit still with this for long (remember the French
Revolution of 1789).

Before the fall: Jean-Baptiste Charpentier's 1763 portrait of the Duc de Penthièvre and family
French Rococo painting in general was characterized by easygoing, lighthearted
treatments of mythological and courtship themes, rich and delicate brushwork, a
relatively light tonal key, and sensuous colouring.
Here are some examples of iconic artworks that exemplify Rococo in its varied
iterations, from mythological scenes to historical portraits, and lush landscapes to
lavish interiors.

François Boucher, Triumph of Venus (1740), photo left.

After François Boucher returned to Paris in the early 1730s, he garnered acclaim as
a painter of large mythological scenes, like his jubilant Triumph of Venus (1740),
which depicts the goddess Venus (a.k.a. Aphrodite) after her birth from seafoam,
accompanied by water nymphs, tritons (mermen), and cherubic putti. Ample pink
flesh abounds, with the coloring and configuration of the nude figures echoed in
the pink-and-white sash that floats above the group. Well-balanced yet active,
lighthearted yet sexually charged, the scene exemplifies Rococo in its energy and
palette, and points to how Boucher further developed a playful sense of eroticism
as a defining element of the genre.

Jean-François de Troy, The Declaration of Love (1731), photo right

The Declaration of Love by Jean-François de Troy (1731) is a defining example

of the genre. In this jovial oil painting, a group of genteel ladies and gentlemen
pause outside a garden, as one of the young men kneels and presents his beloved
with a corsage. Flanking the ladies on either side, the three gentlemen all but blend
into their surroundings, as their taupe outfits match both the ground and the
classical garden wall. The ladies, however, pop in coordinated fanciful, flower-
dotted dresses of pink, blue, and white—which, along with the outdoor setting and
romantic theme, creates a visual Rococo feast.

Thomas Gainsborough, The Blue Boy (c. 1770), photo left.

The Blue Boy (c. 1770)—one of Thomas Gainsborough’s most recognizable works
—shows a rosy-cheeked boy in an elegant, detailed outfit against a more painterly
backdrop, creating a contrast between the delicate figure and his rustic
surroundings. Influenced by 17th-century Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck, the
boy’s azure suit was one of Gainsborough’s first attempts at painting a van Dyck-
style outfit. It may also have been the artist’s rebuttal to his rival, Joshua Reynolds,
who asserted that cool colors like blue and green should not feature prominently in
an artwork.

Fragonard’s The Swing

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, oil on canvas, 1767 (Wallace Collection, London), photo right

As with most Rococo paintings, the subject of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The

Swing is not very complicated! Two lovers have conspired to get this older fellow
to push the young lady in the swing while her lover hides in the bushes. Their idea
is that as she goes up in the swing, she can part her legs, and he can get a perfect
view up her skirt.
They are surrounded by a lush, overgrown garden. A sculptured figure to the left
puts his fingers to his mouth, as though saying “hush,” while another sculpture in
the background has two cupid figures cuddled together. The colors are pastel —
pale pinks and greens, and although we have a sense of movement and a prominent
diagonal line — the painting lacks all of the seriousness of a baroque painting.
If you look really closely you can see the loose brushstrokes in the pink silk dress,
and as she opens her legs, we get a glimpse of her garter belt. It was precisely this
kind of painting that the philosophers of the Enlightenment were soon to condemn.
They demanded a new style of art, one that showed an example of moral behavior,
of human beings at their most noble.
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2020, May 15). Rococo. Encyclopedia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/art/Rococo

Neo-Classicism (1170-1840)

Neo-classicism (1770-1840)

In opposition to the frivolous sensuality of Rococo painters like Jean-Honoré

Fragonard and François Boucher, the Neo-classicists looked to Nicolas Poussin for
their inspiration. The decision to promote Poussiniste painting became an ethical
consideration. They believed that strong drawing was rational, therefore morally
better. They believed that art should be cerebral, not sensual.
Nicolas Poussin, Et in Arcadia Ego, 1637-38, oil on canvas, 185 cm × 121 cm (72.8 in × 47.6 in) (Louvre) , left
photo.

Poussin is a leading Baroque artist in the 17th century. Et in Arcadia Ego was
commissioned in 1638 by Giulio Rospigliosi, later Pope Clement IX (reigned:
1667-9).
This complex work, in which Poussin attempts to deal with some difficult
philosophical questions, illustrates his devotion to both the art of classical antiquity
and figure painting, as well as his reflections on life and death.

The Neo-classicists, such as Jacques-Louis David, preferred the well-delineated

form—clear drawing and modeling (shading). Drawing was considered more
important than painting. The Neo-classical surface had to look perfectly smooth—
no evidence of brush-strokes should be discernable to the naked eye.
Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, oil on canvas, 1784 (Musée du Louvre), left photo.

France was on the brink of its first revolution in 1789, and the Neo-classicists
wanted to express rationality and sobriety that was fitting for their times. Artists
like David supported the rebels through an art that asked for clear-headed thinking,
self-sacrifice to the State (as in Oath of the Horatii) and an austerity reminiscent of
Republican Rome.
Neo-classicism was a child of the Age of Reason (the Enlightenment), when
philosophers believed that we would be able to control our destinies by learning
from and following the Laws of Nature (the United States was founded on
Enlightenment philosophy). Scientific inquiry attracted more attention. Therefore,
Neo-classicism continued the connection to the Classical tradition because it
signified moderation and rational thinking but in a new and more politically-
charged spirit (“neo” means “new,” or in the case of art, an existing style reiterated
with a new twist.)
Neo-classicism is characterized by: clarity of form; sober colors; shallow space;
strong horizontal and verticals that render that subject matter timeless, instead of
temporal as in the dynamic Baroque works; and, Classical subject matter—or
classicizing contemporary subject matter.

Death of Marat
By 1793, the violence of the Revolution dramatically increased until the
beheadings at the Place de la Concorde became a constant, leading a certain Dr.
Joseph Guillotine to invent a machine that would improve the efficiency of the ax
and block and therefore make executions more humane. David was in thick of it.
Early in the Revolution he had joined the Jacobins, a political club that would in
time become the most rabid of the various rebel factions. Led by the ill-fated
Georges Danton and the infamous Maximilien Robespierre, the Jacobins
(including David) would eventually vote to execute Louis XVI and his Queen
Marie Antionette who were caught attempting to escape across the border to the
Austrian Empire.

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, oil on canvas, 1793 (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels),
left photo.

At the height of the Reign of Terror in 1793, David painted a memorial to his great
friend, the murdered publisher, Jean Marat. As in his Death of Socrates, David
substitutes the iconography (symbolic forms) of Christian art for more
contemporary issues. The Death of Marat, 1793 an idealized image of David’s
slain friend is shown holding his murderess’s (Charlotte Corday) letter of
introduction.

Jacques Louis David, The Death of Marat (detail), 1793 (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels), right
photo.

The bloodied knife lays on the floor having opened a fatal gash that functions, as
does Marat’s very composition, as a reference to the entombment of Christ and a
sort of secularized stigmata (reference to the wounds Christ is said to have received
in his hands, feet and side while on the cross). Is David attempting now to find
revolutionary martyrs to replace the saints of Catholicism (which had been
outlawed)?
By 1794 the Reign of Terror had run its course. The Jacobins had begun to execute
not only captured aristocrats but fellow revolutionaries as well. Eventually,
Robespierre himself would die and the remaining Jacobins were likewise executed
or imprisoned.
David escaped death by renouncing his activities and was locked in a cell in the
former palace, the Louvre, until his eventual release by France’s brilliant new
ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte.
This diminutive Corsican had been the youngest General in the French army and
during the Revolution had become a national hero by waging a seemingly endless
string of victorious military campaigns against the Austrians in Belgium and Italy.
Eventually, Napoleon would control most of Europe, would crown himself
Emperor, and would release David in recognition that the artist’s talent could serve
the ruler’s purposes.

Watch this video on Neoclassical Art:

Neoclassical Art
Age of Enlightenment (1700-1800)

Age of Enlightenment (1700-1800)

Scientific experiments like the one pictured here were offered as

fascinating shows to the public in the mid-eighteenth century. In Joseph Wright of
Derby’s painting A Philosopher Giving A Lecture at the Orrery (1765), we see the
demonstration of an orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system that was used
to demonstrate the motions of the planets around the sun—making the universe
seem almost like a clock.
In the center of the orrery is a gas light, which represents the sun (though the figure
who stands in the foreground with his back to us block this from our view); the
arcs represent the orbits of the planets. Wright concentrates on the faces of the
figures to create a compelling narrative.
With paintings like these, Wright invented a new subject: scenes of experiments
and new machinery, and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution (think cities,
railroads, steam power, gas and then electric light, factories, machines, pollution).
Wright’s fascination with light, strange shadows, and darkness, reveals the
influence of Baroque art.
Enlightenment
Toward the middle of the eighteenth century a shift in thinking occurred. This shift
is known as the Enlightenment. You have probably already heard of some
important Enlightenment figures, like Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire. It is helpful
I think to think about the word “enlighten” here—the idea of shedding light on
something, illuminating it, making it clear.
The thinkers of the Enlightenment, influenced by the scientific revolutions of the
previous century, believed in shedding the light of science and reason on the world,
and in order to question traditional ideas and ways of doing things. The scientific
revolution (based on empirical observation, and not on metaphysics or spirituality)
gave the impression that the universe behaved according to universal and
unchanging laws (think of Newton here). This provided a model for looking
rationally on human institutions as well as nature.
Reason and Equality
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (left photo), a French philosopher, for example,
began to question the idea of the divine right of Kings. In The Social Contract, he
wrote that the King does not, in fact, receive his power from God, but rather from
the general will of the people. This, of course, implies that “the people” can also
take away that power! The Enlightenment thinkers also discussed other ideas that
are the founding principles of any democracy—the idea of the importance of the
individual who can reason for himself, the idea of equality under the law, and the
idea of natural rights. The Enlightenment was a period of profound optimism, a
sense that with science and reason—and the consequent shedding of old
superstitions—human beings and human society would improve.
You can probably tell already that the Enlightenment was anti-clerical; it was, for
the most part, opposed to traditional Catholicism. Instead, the Enlightenment
thinkers developed a way of understanding the universe called Deism—the idea,
more or less, is that there is a God, but that this God is not the figure of the Old and
New Testaments, actively involved in human affairs. He is more like a watchmaker
who, once he makes the watch and winds it, has nothing more to do with it.
The Enlightenment, the Monarchy, and the Revolution
The Enlightenment encouraged criticism of the corruption of the monarchy (at this
point King Louis XVI), and the aristocracy. Enlightenment thinkers condemned
Rococo art for being immoral and indecent, and called for a new kind of art that
would be moral instead of immoral, and teach people right and wrong.
Denis Diderot, Enlightenment philosopher, writer and art critic, wrote that the aim
of art was “to make virtue attractive, vice odious, ridicule forceful; that is the aim
of every honest man who takes up the pen, the brush or the chisel’ (Essai sur la
peinture).
These new ways of thinking, combined with a financial crisis (the country was
literally bankrupt) and poor harvests left many ordinary French people both angry
and hungry. In 1789, the French Revolution began. In its first stage, all the
revolutionaries ask for is a constitution that would limit the power of the king.
Ultimately the idea of a constitution failed, and the revolution entered a more
radical stage. In 1792, Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, were beheaded
along with thousands of other aristocrats believed to be loyal to the monarchy.
 At 12.15pm on the afternoon of the 16th October 1793, Marie Antoinette was executed by guillotine in
the Place de la Revolution in Paris

Romanticism (1780-1830)

Romanticism (1780-1830)
At the end of the 18th century and well into the 19th, Romanticism quickly spread
throughout Europe and the United States to challenge the rational ideal held so
tightly during the Enlightenment.
The artists emphasized that sense and emotions - not simply reason and order -
were equally important means of understanding and experiencing the world.
Romanticism celebrated the individual imagination and intuition in the enduring
search for individual rights and liberty. Its ideals of the creative, subjective powers
of the artist fueled avant-garde movements well into the 20th century. Romanticist
practitioners found their voices across all genres, including literature, music, art,
and architecture. Reacting against the sober style of Neoclassicism preferred by
most countries' academies, the far reaching international movement valued
originality, inspiration, and imagination, thus promoting a variety of styles within
the movement.
Additionally, in an effort to stem the tide of increasing industrialization, many of
the Romanticists emphasized the individual's connection to nature and an idealized
past.

Watch this video:

Romanticism in France Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People

The July Revolution
 This painting was made in response to the political upheaval that resulted
in the overthrow of the reigning monarch, Charles X (brother of the beheaded
Louis XVI). Charles X had restored the Bourbon throne after the fall of Napoleon
and would himself be replaced by the restricted constitutional rule of Louis-
Phillipe, the “citizen-king.”
Liberty Leading the People, Delacroix, 1830, left photo.

Eugène Delacroix’s is a complex painting, full of historical reference, yet also full
of the spectrum of human emotion—from grand heroism to angry despair—that is
a central characteristic of French Romanticism. Note the complex interaction
between areas that are brightly reflective and adjacent areas of dark shadow. The
results are vivid contrasts which, like the rapid-fire brushwork, activates the
surface and augments the painting’s sense of movement and energy. Delacroix also
breaks with the tradition of relying upon the painstakingly subtle modulation of
color, and instead, applies brilliant and shocking traces of pure pigment. See, for
example, the notes of sharp primary colors, the blues, yellows and the especially
powerful reds. Again, the effect is vivid and electrifying against the broad areas of
brown and gray and this fits well with the subject. Liberty rushes forward over the
debris of the barricades, by then a signifier of Parisian rebellion.
A Modern Nike
Prior to the late 19th century, the streets of this largely medieval city were the
chaotic result of organic unplanned growth. Paris was a warren of tangled streets,
some little more than narrow alleys that slowed travel, trade and troops, and could
be easily blocked allowing revolutionaries to fortify entire sections of the city. It is
upon these very barricades that Liberty, the personification of freedom (who the
French call Marianne) stands. She holds the tri-color aloft. This is the banned flag
of revolution and democracy.

Nike of Samothrace, 220-190 B.C.E. (Louvre, Paris) , left photo.

The wind spins her drapery around her hips alluding to classical statuary. Note that
the spiraling costume of the great Hellenistic (late ancient Greek) sculpture, the
Nike (victory) of Samothrace on view in the Musée de Louvre was found after the
Delacroix was created but is a useful reference nevertheless. For what possible
reason has Delacroix exposed Marianne’s breasts? The answer lies in the figure not
being an actual person but rather the embodiment of an idea in a human figure.
Marianne is, of course, democracy. Democracy was born in Ancient Greece as
Delacroix reminds us by his reference to ancient sculpture and his use of partial
nudity. But there is a second reference here. During France’s first revolution, the
one that began in 1789, the newly created democratic state was sometimes depicted
as an infant suckled by freedom, by Marianne, its mother.
Class Distinctions
Beside Marianne, we see a menacing crowd that dissolves into the smoke and the
confusion of battle. But in the left middle ground, Delacroix depicts two figures
with greater clarity. They stand together but represent very different social and
economic positions. The man in the top hat, waistcoat and jacket is a member of
the middle class. The second figure is less well off. He wears a white shirt and cap
and is meant to represent a laborer, a member of the working or lower class.
Delacroix’s message is clear. The revolution unites these classes against the ruling
aristocracy.
The Cost of Rebellion
In the foreground lay two dead bodies. The figure on the left is intended to enrage
the viewer. To set the viewer firmly against the excesses of the king’s troops. In
this sense the painting is pure propaganda. The dead figure on the left is dressed in
a long nightshirt that has been push up as his body was dragged into the street from
his bedroom where, presumably, he had been shot. Delacroix is alluding to the
despised practice of the royal troops who spread terror by murdering suspected
revolutionary sympathizers in their beds and then dragging the bodies into the
streets as a warning. The dead uniformed figure on the right is a royalist soldier.
Here, Delacroix shows the enemy as vulnerable.
If you look carefully at the buildings at the right you will see the battle joined and
in the distance, the great Gothic cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, a symbol of the
King’s power but which is now triumphantly flying the tricolor.

Important Art
Henry Fuseli: The Nightmare (1781)

William Blake: The Ancient of Days from Europe a Prophecy copy B (1794)

Antoine Jean Gros: Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in Jaffa (1804)

Francisco Goya: The Third of May 1808 (1814)

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres: La Grande Odalisque (1814)

Caspar David Friedrich: Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (c. 1818)

Key Artists
18.Eugène Delacroix
19.Francisco Goya
20.William Blake
21.Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
22.Caspar David Friedrich
 23.Théodore Géricault

Becoming Modern (1850-1960)

Becoming Modern
People use the term “modern” in a variety of ways, often very loosely, with a lot of
implied associations of new, contemporary, up-to-date, and technological. We
know the difference between a modern country and a third world country and it
usually has less to do with art and more to do with technology and industrial
progress, things like indoor plumbing, easy access to consumer goods, freedom of
expression, and voting rights. In the nineteenth century, however, modernity and
its connection with art had certain specific associations that people began
recognizing and using as barometers to distinguish themselves and their culture
from earlier nineteenth century ways and attitudes.
Édouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, oil on canvas, 1882 (Courtauld Gallery, London), left photo.

Chronologically, Modernism refers to the period from 1850 to 1960. It begins with
the Realist Movement and ends with Abstract Expressionism. That’s just a little
over one hundred years. During that period the western world experienced some
significant changes that transformed Europe and the United States from traditional
societies that were agriculturally based into modern ones with cities and factories
and mass transportation. Here are some important features that all modern societies
share.
24.Capitalism replaced landed fortunes and became the economic system of
modernity in which people exchanged labor for a fixed wage and used their
wages to buy ever more consumer items rather than produce such items
themselves. This economic change dramatically affected class relations
because it offered opportunities for great wealth through individual
initiative, industrialization and technology—somewhat like the
technological and dot.com explosion of the late 20th and early 21st century.
The industrial revolution which began in England in the late 18th century
and rapidly swept across Europe (hit the U.S. immediately following the
Civil War) transformed economic and social relationships, offered an ever
increasing number of cheaper consumer goods, and changed notions of
 education. Who needed the classics when a commercial/technically oriented
education was the key to financial success? The industrial revolution also
fostered a sense of competition and progress that continues to influence us
today.
25.Urban culture replaced agrarian culture as industrialization and cities grew.
Cities were the sites of new wealth and opportunity with their factories and
manufacturing potential. People moving from small farms, towns to large
cities helped to breakdown traditional culture and values. There were also
new complications such as growing urban crime, prostitution, alienation, and
depersonalization. In a small town you probably knew the cobbler who made
your shoes and such a personal relationship often expanded into everyday
economics—you might be able to barter food or labor for a new pair of
shoes or delay payments. These kinds of accommodations that formed a
substructure to agrarian life were swept away with urbanization. City
dwellers bought shoes that were manufactured, transported by railroads,
displayed in shop windows, and purchased only for cash. Assembly lines,
anonymous labor, and advertising created more consumer items but also a
growing sense of depersonalization. The gap between the “haves” and the
“have nots” increased and were more visible in the city.
26.Technological advances such as industrialization, railroads, gas lighting,
streetcars, factory systems, indoor plumbing, appliances, and scientific
advances were rapidly made and these changes dramatically affected the
way people lived and thought about themselves. One consequence was that
people in industrialized areas thought of themselves as progressive and
modern and considered undeveloped cultures in undeveloped countries as
primitive and backward.
27.Modernity is characterized by increasing secularism and diminished
religious authority. People did not abandon religion but they paid less
attention to it. Organized religions were increasingly less able to dictate
standards, values, and subject matter. Fine art moved from representing
human experience and its relationship to God’s creation, to a focus on
personal emotions and individual spiritual experiences that were not based in
any organized and institutionalized religion.
28.The modern world was extremely optimistic—people saw these changes as
positive. They welcomed innovation and championed progress. Change
became a signifier of modernity. Anything that was traditional and static
signaled outmoded, old-fashioned, conservative and was to be avoided by
 the new modern public. Modern Europe and the U.S. internalized these
positions and used modernity as a way of determining and validating their
superiority. The nineteenth century was also a period of tremendous colonial
growth and expansion, in the name of progress and social benefit and all of
these activities were spearheaded by newly industrialized western countries.

Many artists closely identified with modernity and embraced the new
techniques and innovations, the spirit of progress, invention, discovery, creativity
and change. They wanted to participate in creating the modern world and they
were anxious to try out new ideas rather than following the more conservative
guidelines of Academic art. This is not to say that these mid-nineteenth century
artists were the first to challenge an older generation or set of ideas. Many
academic artists had argued over formal issues, styles and subject matter but this
was much like a good natured agreement within a club; everyone in the group
agreed to disagree.
Alphonse Legros, Le Repas des Pauvres (the meal of the poor), 1877, left photo.

By the mid-1850s polite academic disagreements were being taken out of the
Academy and onto the street. Artists were looking increasingly to the private sector
for patronage, tapping into that growing group of bourgeois or middle class
collectors with money to spend and houses to fill with paintings. This new middle
class audience that made its money through industrialization and manufacturing
had lots of “disposable income”, and they wanted pictures that they could
understand, that were easy to look at, fit into their homes, addressed subjects they
liked. Not for them the historical cycles of gods, saints and heroes with their
complex intellectual associations and references; instead, they wanted landscapes,
genre scenes, and still life. They were not less educated than earlier buyers, but
educated with a different focus and set of priorities. Reality was here and now,
progress was inevitable, and the new hero of modern life was the modern man.
This painting by Alphonse Legros reflects the influence of Gustave Courbet who,
in the mid-nineteenth century, challenged convention by rejecting the historical
and mythological subjects that had dominated art for centuries. Instead he painted
scenes of daily life. The paintings, on the large scale previously reserved for
history painting and in a realist style, shocked the art world.
Modernity is then a composite of contexts: a time, a space, and an attitude. What
makes a place or an object “modern” depends on these conditions.
 Paul Gauguin, Harvest: Le Pouldu, 1890, left photo.

The Avant-Garde
As applied to art, avant-garde means art that is innovatory, introducing or
exploring new forms or subject matter.
Throughout the 19th century there were artists who produced pictures that we do
not label “modern art” generally because the techniques or subjects were
associated with the conservative academic styles, techniques and approaches. On
the other hand, modern artists were often called the “avant-garde.”
This was originally a military term that described the point man (the first soldier
out)—the one to take the most risk. The French socialist Henri de Saint-Simon first
used the term in the early 1820s to describe an artist whose work would serve the
needs of the people, of a socialist society rather than the ruling classes. The avant-
garde is also used to identify artists whose painting subjects and techniques were
radical, marking them off from the more traditional or academic styles, but not
with any particular political ideology in mind.

Avant-garde became a kind of generic term for a number of art movements

centered on the idea of artistic autonomy and independence. In some cases the
avant-garde was closely associated with political activism, especially socialist or
communist movements; in other cases, the avant-garde was pointedly removed
from politics and focused primarily on aesthetics. The avant-garde was never a
cohesive group of artists and what was avant-garde in one nation was not
necessarily the same in others.
Édouard Manet, Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe (The Luncheon on the grass), 1863, left photo.

Finally, although modern artists were working throughout many countries in

Europe and the United States, most 19th century art and much twentieth-century
modern art is centered in France and produced by French artists. Unlike England
which was politically stable in the nineteenth century, France went through a
variety of governments and insurrections all of which provided a unique political
and cultural environment that fostered what we know as modern art.

Early Photography
Early Photography
By modern standards, nineteenth-century photography can appear rather primitive.
While the stark black and white landscapes and unsmiling people have their own
austere beauty, these images also challenge our notions of what defines a work of
art.
Photography is a controversial fine art medium, simply because it is difficult to
classify—is it an art or a science? Nineteenth-century photographers struggled with
this distinction, trying to reconcile aesthetics with improvements in technology.
The Birth of Photography
Although the principle of the camera was known in antiquity, the actual chemistry
needed to register an image was not available until the nineteenth century.
Artists from the Renaissance onwards used a camera obscura (Latin for dark
chamber), or a small hole in the wall of a darkened box that would pass light
through the hole and project an upside down image of whatever was outside the
box. However, it was not until the invention of a light sensitive surface by
Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce that the basic principle of photography was
born.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window at Gras (1826) , left photo.

From this point the development of photography largely related to technological

improvements in three areas, speed, resolution and permanence. The first
photographs, such as Niepce’s famous View from the Window at Gras (1826)
required a very slow speed (a long exposure period), in this case about eight hours,
obviously making many subjects difficult, if not impossible, to photograph. Taken
using a camera obscura to expose a copper plate coated in silver and pewter,
Niepce’s image looks out of an upstairs window, and part of the blurry quality is
due to changing conditions during the long exposure time, causing the resolution,
or clarity of the image, to be grainy and hard to read.
An additional challenge was the issue of permanence, or how to successfully stop
any further reaction of the light sensitive surface once the desired exposure had
been achieved. Many of Niepce’s early images simply turned black over time due
to continued exposure to light. This problem was largely solved in 1839 by the
invention of hypo, a chemical that reversed the light sensitivity of paper.

Louis Daguerre, The Artist’s Studio, 1837, daguerreotype, left photo.

Technological Improvements
Photographers after Niepce experimented with a variety of techniques. Louis
Daguerre invented a new process he dubbed a daguerrotype in 1839, which
significantly reduced exposure time and created a lasting result, but only produced
a single image.
William Henry Fox Talbot, The Open Door, 1844, Salted paper print from paper negative, below photo.

At the same time, Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot was experimenting with
his what would eventually become his calotype method, patented in February
1841. Talbot’s innovations included the creation of a paper negative, and new
technology that involved the transformation of the negative to a positive image,
allowing for more that one copy of the picture. The remarkable detail of Talbot’s
method can be see in his famous photograph, The Open Door (1844) which
captures the view through a medieval-looking entrance. The texture of the rough
stones surrounding the door, the vines growing up the walls and the rustic broom
that leans in the doorway demonstrate the minute details captured by Talbot’s
photographic improvements.

Honoré Daumier, Nadar élevant la Photographie à la hauteur de l’Art (Nadar elevating Photography to Art),
lithograph from Le Boulevard, May 25, 1863, left photo.

The collodion method was introduced in 1851. This process involved fixing a
substance known as gun cotton onto a glass plate, allowing for an even shorter
exposure time (3–5 minutes), as well as a clearer image.
The big disadvantage of the collodion process was that it needed to be exposed and
developed while the chemical coating was still wet, meaning that photographers
had to carry portable darkrooms to develop images immediately after exposure.
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.

Eadweard Muybridge, The Horse in Motion (“Sallie Gardner,” owned by Leland Stanford; running at a
1:40 gait over the Palo Alto track, 19 June 1878), left photo.

Further advances in technology continued to make photography less labor

intensive. By 1867 a dry glass plate was invented, reducing the inconvenience of
the wet collodion method.
Prepared glass plates could be purchased, eliminating the need to fool with
chemicals. 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 Muybridge’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.
Finally in 1888 George Eastman developed the dry gelatin roll film, making it
easier for film to be carried. Eastman also produced the first small inexpensive
cameras, allowing more people access to the technology.
Photographers in the nineteenth 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.

Impressionism

Impressionism (1870-1900)
Impressionism was a radical art movement that began in the late 1800s, centered
primarily around Parisian painters. Impressionists rebelled against classical subject
matter and embraced modernity, desiring to create works that reflected the world in
which they lived.

Watch this video:

Claude Monet, Impression Sunrise, 1872 (exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874), left photo.

Establishing Their Own Exhibitions—Apart from the Salon

The group of artists who became known as the Impressionists did something
ground-breaking, in addition to their sketchy, light-filled paintings. They
established their own exhibition – apart from the annual salon. At that time, the
salon was really the only way to exhibit your work (the work was chosen by a
jury). Claude Monet, August Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley,
and several other artists could not afford to wait for France to accept their work.
They all had experienced rejection by the Salon jury in recent years and knew
waiting a whole year in between each exhibition was no longer tenable. They
needed to show their work and they wanted to sell it.
So, in an attempt to get recognized outside of the official channel of the salon,
these artists banded together and held their own exhibition. They pooled their
money, rented a studio that belonged to the famous photographer Nadar and set a
date for their first exhibition together. They called themselves the Anonymous
Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Printmakers. The show opened at about the
same time as the annual Salon, May 1874. The Impressionists held eight
exhibitions from 1874 through 1886.
The decision was based on their frustration and their ambition to show the world
their new, light-filled images.
The impressionists regarded Manet as their inspiration and leader in their spirit of
revolution, but Manet had no desire to join their cooperative venture into
independent exhibitions. Manet had set up his own pavilion during the 1867
World’s Fair, but he was not interested in giving up on the Salon jury. He wanted
Paris to come to him and accept him—even if he had to endure their ridicule in the
process.
Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Sisley had met through classes. Berthe Morisot was a
friend of both Degas and Manet (she would marry Édouard Manet’s brother
Eugène by the end of 1874). She had been accepted to the Salon, but her work had
become more experimental since then. Degas invited Berthe to join their risky
effort. The first exhibition did not repay them monetarily but it drew the critics
who decided their art was abominable. It wasn’t finished. They called it “just
impressions.” (And not in a complimentary way.)
The Lack of “Finish”
Remember that the look of a J.A.D. Ingres or even a surly Delacroix had a
“finished” surface. These younger artists’ completed works looked like sketches.
And not even detailed sketches but the fast, preliminary “impressions” that artists
would dash off to preserve an idea of what to paint later. Normally, an artist’s
“impressions” were not meant to be sold, but were meant to be aids for the
memory—to take these ideas back to the studio for the masterpiece on canvas. The
critics thought it was insane to sell paintings that looked like slap-dash impressions
and consider these paintings works “finished.”
Landscape and Contemporary Life (Not History Painting!)
Also—Courbet, Manet and the Impressionists challenged the Academy’s category
codes. The Academy deemed that only “history painting” was great painting.
These young Realists and Impressionists opened the door to dismantling this
hierarchy of subject matter. They believed that landscapes and genres scenes were
worthy and important.
Color
In their landscapes and genre scenes of contemporary life, the Impressionist artists
tried to arrest a moment in their fast-paced lives by pinpointing specific
atmospheric conditions—light flickering on water, moving clouds, a burst of rain.
Their technique tried to capture what they saw. They painted small commas of
pure color one next to another. The viewer would stand at a reasonable distance so
that the eye would mix the individual marks, thus blending the colors together
optically. This method created more vibrant colors than those colors mixed on a
palette. Becoming a team dedicated to this new, non-Academic painting gave them
the courage to pursue the independent exhibition format—a revolutionary idea of
its own.
 Light
An important aspect of the Impressionist painting was the appearance of quickly
shifting light on the surface. This sense of moving rapidly or quickly changing
atmospheric conditions or living in a world that moves faster was also part of the
Impressionist’s criteria. They wanted to create an art that seemed modern: about
contemporary life, about the fast pace of contemporary life, and about the
sensation of seeing light change incessantly in the landscape. They painted
outdoors (en plein air) to capture the appearance of the light as it really flickered
and faded while they worked.
August Renoir, Bal du moulin de la Galette (Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette), 1876, left photo.

Mary Cassatt was an American who met Edgar Degas and was invited to join the
group as they continued to mount independent exhibitions. By the 1880s, the
Impressionist accepted the name the critics gave them. The American Mary Cassatt
began to exhibition with the Impressionists in 1877.
For a very long time, the French refused to find the work worthy of praise. The
Americans and other non-French collectors did. For this reason, the U.S. and other
foreign collections own most of the Impressionist art. (The Metropolitan Museum
of Art owns a good portion of the Havermayer Collection. Louisine Havermayer
knew Mary Cassatt, who advised Louisine when she visited Paris.)

Key Artists
29.Édouard Manet
30.Claude Monet
31.Edgar Degas
32.Pierre-Auguste Renoir
33.Camille Pissaro
Post-Impressionism (1880-1920)

Post-impressionism (1880-1920)
Post-Impressionism is a term used to describe the reaction in the 1880s against
Impressionism. It was led by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and
Georges Seurat.
The Post-Impressionists rejected Impressionism’s concern with the spontaneous
and naturalistic rendering of light and color. Instead they favored an emphasis on
more symbolic content, formal order and structure.
Similar to the Impressionists, however, they stressed the artificiality of the picture.
The Post-Impressionists also believed that color could be independent from form
and composition as an emotional and aesthetic bearer of meaning.
Watch this interesting clip from Doctor Who Series 5 Episode 10, Vincent and the Doctor. The
Doctor and Amy take Vincent Van Gogh - who struggled to sell a single painting in his own
lifetime - to a Paris art Gallery in the year 2010.

The term is usually confined to the four major figures who developed and extended
impressionism in distinctly different directions – Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin,
Georges Seurat and Vincent van Gogh.

Paul Cézanne 1839–1906

The thinker artist, Cezanne formulated the philosophical foundations of painting
and tried to convey the eternal laws of life through artistic means.
“For several generations of painters have been fed three apples of Cezanne,”
exclaimed German artist Georg Gross at the dawn of the twentieth century.
In the early period of his work, Cezanne came into contact with impressionism and
received a lot from working together with Camille Pissarro (“The Road to
Pontoise”, 1875). However, Cezanne was not interested in fleeting impressions, the
transmission of which fascinated the impressionists: the master turns to an analysis
of nature, achieving "something more stable, eternal, like the art of museums."

Les joueurs de carte, 1892.

 Georges Seurat 1859–1891
Neo-Impressionism is a term applied to an avant-garde art movement that
flourished principally in France from 1886 to 1906.
Led by the example of Georges Seurat, artists of the Neo-Impressionist circle
renounced the random spontaneity of Impressionism in favor of a measured
painting technique grounded in science and the study of optics.
Neo-Impressionists came to believe that separate touches of interwoven pigment
result in a greater vibrancy of color in the observer's eye than is achieved by the
conventional mixing of pigments on the palette. Known as mélange optique
(optical mixture), this meticulous paint application would, they felt, realize a
pulsating shimmer of light on the canvas.
The separation of color through individual strokes of pigment came to be known as
Divisionism, while the application of precise dots of paint came to be called
Pointillism.
Seurat put impressionist painting of light and colour on a scientific basis (neo-
Impressionism, divisionism).

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884-1886

Paul Gauguin 1848-1903

Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a leading Post-
Impressionist painter.
His experimentation with colouring led directly to the Synthetist style of modern
art while his work under the influence of the cloisonnist style paved the way to
Primitivism and the return to the pastoral.
He felt that traditional European painting had become too imitative and lacked
symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him to be full of
mystic symbolism and vigour.
Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin evolved towards
Cloisonnism. Gauguin paid little attention to classical perspective and eliminated
subtle gradations of colour, thereby dispensing with the two most characteristic
principles of post-Renaissance art.
His painting later evolved towards "Synthetism" in which neither form nor colour
predominate each having an equal role. Gauguin retained intense light and colour
but rejected painting from nature and reintroduced imaginative subject matter.

D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?, 1897

Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890

Van Gogh is now one of the most well-known post-Impressionist painters,
although he was not widely appreciated in his lifetime.
He was born on 30 March 1853 in Zundert in the southern Netherlands, the son of
a pastor.
In 1880, at the age of 27, he decided to become an artist. He moved around,
teaching himself to draw and paint and receiving financial support from Theo. In
1886, Van Gogh joined Theo in Paris, and met many artists including Degas,
Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro and Gauguin, with whom he became friends. His style
changed significantly under the influence of Impressionism, becoming lighter and
brighter.
In 1888, Van Gogh moved to Provence in southern France, where he painted his
famous series 'Sunflowers'. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals and swung
between periods of inertia, depression and incredibly concentrated artistic activity,
his work reflecting the intense colours and strong light of the countryside around
him. Van Gogh painted from nature but developed highly personal use of colour
and brushwork directly expressing emotional response to subject and his inner
world.

The Starry Night, 1889

Post-impressionism as a term was first used by British artist and art critic Roger
Fry in 1910 when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and the Post-
Impressionists.

Key Artists
34.Paul Cézanne
35.Vincent van Gogh
36.Paul Gauguin
37.Georges Seurat
38.Édouard Vuillard

1900s to present

Welcome to the 1900s to the present era. In this era, we will explore the dramatic
changes in the art perspectives. You will learn about:
39.Modern Art
40.Contemporary Art

Modern Art

Le Marin, 1943, Picasso ---- image by © Philip Fong

Modern Art runs from around 1880 to 1970 and they were an extremely busy 90
years. The Impressionists opened the floodgates on new paths to take and
individual artists such as Picasso and Duchamp were themselves responsible for
creating multiple movements.
The last two decades of the 1800s were filled with movements like Cloisonnism,
Japonism, Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Expressionism, and Fauvism. There
were also a number of schools and groups like The Glasgow Boys and the
Heidelberg School, The Band Noire (Nubians) and The Ten American Painters.
Art was no less diverse or confusing in the 1900s.
Movements like Art Nouveau and Cubism kicked off the new century with
Bauhaus, Dadaism, Purism, Rayism, and Suprematism following close behind. Art
Deco, Constructivism, and the Harlem Renaissance took over the 1920s while
Abstract Expressionism emerged in the 1940s.
By mid-century, we saw even more revolutionary styles. Funk and Junk Art, Hard-
Edge Painting, and Pop Art became the norm in the 50s. The 60s were filled with
Minimalism, Op Art, Psychedelic Art, and much, much more.

Contemporary Art

October 1996, Miami, Florida, USA --- Art by Romero Britto on Display in Gallery --- Image by © Dan
Forer/Beateworks/Corbis

The 1970s is what most people consider as the beginning of Contemporary Art and
it continues to the present day.
Most interestingly, either fewer movements are identifying themselves as such or
art history simply hasn't caught up yet with those that have. Still, there is a growing
list of -isms in the art world.
The 70s saw Post-Modernism and Ugly Realism along with a surge in Feminist
Art, Neo-Conceptualism, and Neo-Expressionism.
The 80s were filled with Neo-Geo, Multiculturalism, and the Graffiti Movement,
as well as BritArt and Neo-Pop.
By the time the 90s hit, art movements became less defined and somewhat unusual,
almost as if people had run out of names. Net Art, Artefactoria, Toyism, Lowbrow,
Bitterism, and Stuckism are some of the styles of the decade. And though it's still
new, the 21st century has its own Thinkism and Funism to enjoy.

Web source: Esaak, Shelley. "An Art History Timeline From Ancient to Contemporary Art."
ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/art-history-timeline-183476.

Fauvism (1905-1908)

Fauvism (1905-1908)
Distinctive brushwork
Fauvism developed in France to become the first new artistic style of the 20th
century. In contrast to the dark, vaguely disturbing nature of much fin-de-siècle, or
turn-of-the-century, Symbolist art, the Fauves produced bright cheery landscapes
and figure paintings, characterized by pure vivid color and bold distinctive
brushwork.
Henri Matisse, The Green Line,1905, oil on canvas, 40.5 x 32.5 cm (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen), left
photo.

“Wild beasts”
When shown at the 1905 Salon d’Automne (an exhibition organized by artists in
response to the conservative policies of the official exhibitions, or salons) in Paris,
the contrast to traditional art was so striking it led critic Louis Vauxcelles to
describe the artists as “Les Fauves” or “wild beasts,” and thus the name was born.
One of several Expressionist movements to emerge in the early 20th century,
Fauvism was short lived, and by 1910, artists in the group had diverged toward
more individual interests. Nevertheless, Fauvism remains signficant for it
demonstrated modern art’s ability to evoke intensely emotional reactions through
radical visual form.

The expressive potential of color

The best known Fauve artists include Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Maurice
Vlaminck who pioneered its distinctive style. Their early works reveal the
influence of Post-Impressionist artists, especially Neo-Impressionists like Paul
Signac, whose interest in color’s optical effects had led to a divisionist method of
juxtaposing pure hues on canvas. The Fauves, however, lacked such scientific
intent. They emphasized the expressive potential of color, employing it arbitrarily,
not based on an object’s natural appearance.
Henri Matisse, Woman with a Hat, 1905, oil on canvas, 79.4 x 59.7 cm (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art),
right photo.
In Luxe, calm et volupté (1904), for example, Matisse employed a pointillist style
by applying paint in small dabs and dashes. Instead of the subtle blending of
complimentary colors typical of Neo-Impressionism Seurat, for example, the
combination of firey oranges, yellows, greens and purple is almost overpowering
in its vibrant impact.
Henri Matisse, Luxe, calme et volupté, 1904, oil on canvas, 98.5 x 118.5 cm (Museé d’Orsay, Paris), left photo.

Similarly, while paintings such as Maurice de Vlaminck’s The River Seine at

Chantou (1906) appear to mimic the spontaneous, active brushwork of
Impressionism, the Fauves adopted a painterly approach to enhance their work’s
emotional power, not to capture fleeting effects of color, light or atmosphere on
their subjects. For The River Seine, de Vlaminck used impasto (a technique
practiced by many Fauves): thick daubs of paint applied directly from the tube,
then brushed together in short strokes to create the effect of movement. Their
preference for landscapes, carefree figures and lighthearted subject matter reflects
their desire to create an art that would appeal primarily to the viewers’ senses.

Maurice de Vlaminck, The River Seine at Chatou, 1906, oil on canvas, 82.6 x 101.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York), right photo.

Paintings such as Matisse’s Bonheur de Vivre (1905-06) epitomize this goal.

Bright colors and undulating lines pull our eye gently through the ideallic scene,
encouraging us to imagine feeling the warmth of the sun, the cool of the grass, the
soft touch of a caress, and the passion of a kiss.

Henri Matisse, Bonheur de Vivre (Joy of Life), 1905-6, oil on canvas, 176.5 x 240.7 cm (Barnes Foundation,
Philadelphia), left photo.

Like many modern artists, the Fauves also found inspiration in objects from Africa
and other non-western cultures. Seen through a colonialist lens, the formal
distinctions of African art reflected current notions of Primitivism–the belief that,
lacking the corrupting influence of European civilization, non-western peoples
were more in tune with the primal elements of nature.
Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra) of 1907 shows how Matisse combined his
traditional subject of the female nude with the influence of primitive sources. The
woman’s face appears mask-like in the use of strong outlines and harsh contrasts of
light and dark, and the hard lines of her body recall the angled planar surfaces
common to African sculpture. This distorted effect, further heightened by her
contorted pose, clearly distinguishes the figure from the idealized odalisques of
Ingres and painters of the past.

Henri Matisse, The Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra), 1907, oil on canvas, 92.1 x 140.3 cm (Baltimore Museum of
Art), right photo.

The Fauves’ interest in Primitivism reinforced their reputation as “wild beasts”

who sought new possibilities for art through their exploration of direct expression,
impactful visual forms and instinctual appeal.

Key Artists
41.Henri Matisse
42.Maurice Vlaminck
43.André Derain
44.Kees Van Dongen
45.Raoul Dufy
Additional resources:
 Fauvism at theartstory.org
 Fauvism at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Timeline of Art History
 African Influences in Modern Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s
Timeline of Art History

Web source: Dr. Virginia B. Spivey, "Fauvism, an introduction," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed
September 18, 2019, https://smarthistory.org/a-beginners-guide-to-fauvism/.

Cubism (1908-1920)

The Evolution of Cubism (1908-1920)

Beginning in 1908, and continuing through the first few months of 1912, Georges
Braque and Pablo Picasso co-invent the first phase of Cubism.
Since it is dominated by the analysis of form, this first stage is usually referred to
as Analytic Cubism. But then during the summer of 1912, Braque leaves Paris to
take a holiday in Provence. During his time there, he wanders into a hardware
store, and there he finds a roll of oil cloth. Oil cloth is an early version of contact
paper, the vinyl adhesive used to line the shelves or drawers in a cupboard. Then,
as now, these materials come in a variety of pre-printed patterns. Braque purchased
some oil cloth printed with a fake wood grain. That particular pattern drew his
attention because he was at work on a Cubist drawing of a guitar, and he was about
to render the grain of the wood in pencil. Instead, he cut the oil cloth and pasted a
piece of the factory-printed grain pattern right into his drawing.
With this collage, Braque changed the direction of art for the next ninety years.

Man with guitar, Paris, Braque,1911, right photo.

Collage
As you might expect, Picasso was not far behind Braque. Picasso immediately
begins to create collage with oil cloth as well—and adds other elements to the mix
(but remember, it was really Braque who introduced collage—he never gets
enough credit).

Still life on a piano, Picasso, 1911, left photo.

So what is the big deal? Oil cloth, collage, wood grain patterns—what does this
have to do with art and Cubism? One of the keys to understanding the importance
of Cubism, of Picasso and Braque, is to consider their actions and how unusual
they were for the time. When Braque, and then Picasso placed industrially-
produced objects (“low” commercial culture) into the realm of fine art (“high”
culture) they acted as artistic iconoclasts (icon=image/clast=destroyer).
Moreover, they questioned the elitism of the art world, which had always dictated
the separation of common, everyday experience from the rarefied, contemplative
realm of artistic creation. Of equal importance, their work highlighted—and
separated—the role of technical skill from art-making. Braque and Picasso
introduced a “fake” element on purpose, not to mislead or fool their audience, but
rather to force a discussion of art and craft, of high and low, of unique and mass-
produced objects. They ask: “Can this object still be art if I don’t actually render
its forms myself, if the quality of the art is no longer directly tied to my technical
skills or level of craftsmanship?”

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912 (Musee Picasso), left photo.

Still-Life with Chair Caning

Virtually all avant-garde art of the second half of the twentieth century is indebted
to this brave renunciation. But that doesn’t make this kind of Cubism, often called
Synthetic Cubism (piecing together, or synthesis of form), any easier to interpret.
At first glance, Picasso’s Still-Life with Chair Caning of 1912 might seem a
mishmash of forms instead of clear picture. But we can understand the image—and
other like it—by breaking down Cubist pictorial language into parts.
Let’s start at the upper right: almost at the edge of the canvas (at two o’clock) there
is the handle of a knife. Follow it to the left to find the blade. The knife cuts a
piece of citrus fruit. You can make out the rind and the segments of the slice at the
bottom right corner of the blade. Below the fruit, which is probably a lemon, is the
white, scalloped edge of a napkin. To the left of these things and standing
vertically in the top center of the canvas (twelve o’clock) is a wine glass. It’s hard
to see at first, so look carefully. Just at the top edge of the chair caning is the
glass’s base, above it is the stem (thicker than you might expect), and then the
bowl of the glass. It is difficult to find the forms you would expect because Picasso
depicts the glass from more than one angle. At eleven o’clock is the famous
“JOU,” which means “game” in French, but also the first three letters of the
French word for newspaper (or more literally, “daily”; journal=daily). In fact, you
can make out the bulk of the folded paper quite clearly. Don’t be confused by the
pipe that lays across the newspaper. Do you see its stem and bowl?
Looking Down and Looking Through
But there are still big questions: why the chair caning, what is the gray diagonal at
the bottom of the glass, and why the rope frame? (Think of a ship’s port hole. The
port hole reference is an important clue.) Also, why don’t the letters sit better on
the newspaper? Finally, why is the canvas oval?
It has already been determined that this still life is composed of a sliced lemon, a
glass, newspaper, and a pipe. Perhaps this is a breakfast setting, with a citron
pressé (French lemonade). In any case, these items are arranged upon a glass
tabletop. You can see the reflection of the glass. In fact, the glass allows us to see
below the table’s surface, which is how we see the chair caning—which represents
the seat tucked in below the table.
Okay, so far so good. But why is the table elliptical in shape? This appears to be a
café table, which are round or square but never oval. Yet, when we look at a
circular table, we never see it from directly above. Instead, we see it at an angle,
and it appears elliptical in shape as we approach the table to sit down. But what
about the rope, which was not mass-produced, nor made by Picasso, but rather
something made especially for this painting? We can view it as the bumper of a
table, as it was used in some cafés, or as the frame of a ship’s port hole, which we
can look “through,” to see the objects represented. The rope’s simultaneous
horizontal and vertical orientation creates a way for the viewer (us) to read the
image in two ways—looking down and looking through/across. Put simply,
Picasso wants us to remember that the painting is something different from that
which it represents. Or as Gertrude Stein said, “A rose is a rose is a rose.”
Watch this video on Picasso's work, Still Life with Chair Caning:
Key Artists
46.Pablo Picasso
47.Georges Braque
48.Fernand Léger
49.Juan Gris
50.Robert Delaunay

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Abstract Expressionism (1945-1960)

Abstract Expressionism (1945-1960)

Cubism is an important development in freeing painting from traditional
representational depiction.
The coming decades of painting will be a wealth of exploration of levels of
abstraction and focus on how painting uniquely articulates formal aspects like
color, line, and the flatness of the two-dimensional pictorial surface.
"It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one
paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academic painting.
However, there is no such thing as good painting about nothing. " - Mark Rothko

Watch this video on Abstract Expressionism.

Abstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed
by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de
Kooning in the 1940s and 1950s. It is often characterized by gestural brush-strokes
or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity.
The abstract expressionists were mostly based in New York City, and also became
known as the New York school. The name evokes their aim to make art that while
abstract was also expressive or emotional in its effect. They were inspired by the
surrealist idea that art should come from the unconscious mind, and by the
automatism of artist Joan Miró.

Willem de Kooning, The Visit, 1966-67, left photo.

Mark Rothko, Black on Maroon, 1958, left photo.

Jackson Pollock, Yellow Islands, 1952, right photo.

 Watch this video:

Key Artists
51.Jackson Pollock
52.Willem de Kooning
53.Mark Rothko
54.Wasilly Kandinsky
55.Helen Frankenthaler
56.Clyfford Still

Dada art (1916-1923)

Dada art (1916-1923)

Dada was a philosophical and artistic movement of the early 20th century,
practiced by a group of European writers, artists, and intellectuals in protest against
what they saw as a senseless war—World War I. The Dadaists used absurdity as
an offensive weapon against the ruling elite whom they saw as contributing to the
war.
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (original), photographed by Alfred Stieglitz in 1917 after its rejection by the Society of
Independent Artists, left photo

But to its practitioners, Dada was not a movement, its artists not artists, and its art
not art.
The Birth of Dada
Dada was born in Europe at a time when the horror of World War I was being
played out in what amounted to citizens' front yards. Forced out of the cities of
Paris, Munich, and St. Petersburg, a number of artists, writers, and intellectuals
found themselves congregating in the refuge that Zurich (in neutral Switzerland)
offered.
By mid-1917, Geneva and Zurich were awash in the heads of the avant-garde
movement, including Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, Stefan Zweig, Tristan Tzara, Else
Lasker-Schuler, and Emil Ludwig. They were inventing what Dada would become,
according to the writer and journalist Claire Goll, out of literary and artistic
discussions of expressionism, cubism, and futurism that took place in Swiss
coffeehouses. The name they settled on for their movement, "Dada," may mean
"hobby horse" in French or perhaps is simply nonsense syllables, an appropriate
name for an explicitly nonsensical art.
Banding together in a loosely knit group, these writers and artists used any public
forum they could find to challenge nationalism, rationalism, materialism, and any
other -ism that they felt had contributed to a senseless war. If society was going in
this direction, they said, we'll have no part of it or its traditions, most particularly
artistic traditions. We, who are non-artists, will create non-art since art (and
everything else in the world) has no meaning anyway.
The Ideas of Dadaism
Three ideas were basic to the Dada movement—spontaneity, negation, and
absurdity—and those three ideas were expressed in a vast array of creative chaos.
57.Spontaneity was an appeal to individuality and a violent cry against the
system. Even the best art is an imitation; even the best artists are dependent
on others, they said. Romanian poet and performance artist Tristan Tzara
(1896–1963) wrote that literature is never beautiful because beauty is dead;
it should be a private affair between the writer and himself. Only when art is
spontaneous can it be worthwhile, and then only to the artist.
 58.To a Dadaist, negation meant sweeping and cleaning away the art
establishment by spreading demoralization. Morality, they said, has given us
charity and pity; morality is an injection of chocolate into the veins of all.
Good is no better than bad; a cigarette butt and an umbrella are as exalted as
God. Everything has an illusory importance; man is nothing, everything is of
equal unimportance; everything is irrelevant, nothing is relevant.
59.And in the end, everything is absurd. Everything is paradoxical; everything
opposes harmony. Tzara's "Dada Manifesto 1918" was a resounding
expression of that.
"I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things and in principle I
am against manifestos, as I am against principles. I write this manifesto to show
that people can perform contrary actions together while taking one fresh gulp of
air; I am against action: for continuous contradiction, for affirmation too, I am
neither for nor against and I do not explain because I hate common sense. Like
everything else, Dada is useless."

Key Artists
Important Dada artists include:
1. Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968, whose "ready-mades" included a bottle rack and
a cheap reproduction of the Mona Lisa with a mustache and goatee);

2. Jean or Hans Arp (1886–1966; "Shirt Front and Fork")

3. Hugo Ball (1886–1947, "Karawane," the "Dada Manifesto," practitioner of

"sound poetry")
4. Emmy Hennings (1885–1948, itinerant poet and cabaret chanteuse)
5. Tzara (poet, painter, performance artist)
6. Marcel Janco (1895–1984, the "bishop dress")
7. Sophie Taeuber (1889–1943, "Oval Composition with Abstract Motifs")

8. Francis Picabia (1879–1952, "Ici, c'est ici Stieglitz, foi et amour").

Dada artists are hard to classify in a genre because many of them did many things:
music, literature, sculpture, painting, puppetry, photography, body art, and
performance art. For example, Alexander Sacharoff (1886–1963) was a dancer,
painter, and choreographer; Emmy Hennings was a cabaret performer and poet;
Sophie Taeuber was a dancer, choreographer, furniture and textile designer, and
puppeteer. Marcel Duchamp made paintings, sculpture, and films and was a
performance artist who played with the concepts of sexuality. Francis Picabia
(1879–1963) was a musician, poet, and artist who played with his name (as "not
Picasso"), producing images of his name, art titled with his name, signed by his
name.
Art Styles of the Dada Artists
Ready-mades (found objects re-objectified as art), photo-montages, art collages
assembled from a huge variety of materials: all of these were new forms of art
developed by Dadaists as a way to explore and explode older forms while
emphasizing found-art aspects. The Dadaists thrust mild obscenities, scatological
humor, visual puns, and everyday objects (renamed as "art") into the public eye.
Marcel Duchamp performed the most notable outrages by painting a mustache on a
copy of the Mona Lisa (and scribbling an obscenity beneath), and promoting "The
Fountain," a urinal signed R. Mutt, which may not have been his work at all.
The public and art critics were revulsed—which the Dadaists found wildly
encouraging. Enthusiasm was contagious, so the (non)movement spread from
Zurich to other parts of Europe and New York City. And just as mainstream artists
were giving it serious consideration, in the early 1920s, Dada (true to form)
dissolved itself.
In an interesting twist, this art of protest—based on a serious underlying principle
—is delightful. The nonsense factor rings true. Dada art is whimsical, colorful,
wittily sarcastic, and at times, downright silly. If one wasn't aware that there was,
indeed, a rationale behind Dadaism, it would be fun to speculate as to just what
these gentlemen were up to when they created these pieces.
Sources
 Kristiansen, Donna M. "What Is Dada?" Educational Theatre Journal 20.3 (1968): 457–62.
Print.McBride, Patrizia C. "Weimar-Era Montage Perception, Expression, Storytelling." In "The
Chatter of the Visible: Montage and Narrative in Weimar, Germany." Ed. Patrizia C. McBride.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. 14–40. Print.Verdier, Aurélie, and Claude
Kincaid. "Picabia's Quasi-Name." RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 63/64 (2013): 215–28.
Print.Wünsche, Isabel. "Exile, the Avant-Garde, and Dada Women Artists Active in Switzerland
During the First World War." In "Marianne Werefkin and the Women Artists in Her Circle."
Brill, 2017. 48–68. Print.

Web source: Esaak, Shelley. "What Is Dada?" ThoughtCo, Aug. 22, 2019, thoughtco.com/what-is-dada-182380.

Futurism (1909-1944)

The Futurist painters—Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Gino

Severini, and Giacomo Balla—signed their first manifesto in 1910 (the last named
his daughter Elica—Propeller!). Futurist painting had first looked to the color and
the optical experiments of the late 19th century, but in the fall of 1911, Marinetti
and the Futurist painters visited the Salon d’Automne in Paris and saw Cubism in
person for the first time. Cubism had an immediate impact that can be seen in
Boccioni’s Materia of 1912 for example. Nevertheless, the Futurists declared their
work to be completely original.

Umberto Boccioni, Materia, 1912 (reworked 1913), oil on canvas, 226 x 150 cm (Mattioli Collection loaned to
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice), left photo.

Dynamism of Bodies in Motion

The Futurists were particularly excited by the works of late 19th-century scientist
and photographer Étienne-Jules Marey, whose chronophotographic (time-based)
studies depicted the mechanics of animal and human movement.

A precursor to cinema, Marey’s innovative experiments with time-lapse

photography were especially influential for Balla. In his painting Dynamism of a
Dog on a Leash, the artist playfully renders the dog’s (and dog walker’s) feet as
continuous movements through space over time.

Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912, oil on canvas, 35 1/2 x 43 1/4 ” (Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
Buffalo), right photo.

Entranced by the idea of the “dynamic,” the Futurists sought to represent an

object’s sensations, rhythms and movements in their images, poems and
manifestos. Such characteristics are beautifully expressed in Boccioni’s most
iconic masterpiece, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (see topmost photo
above).
The choice of shiny bronze lends a mechanized quality to Boccioni’s sculpture, so
here is the Futurists’ ideal combination of human and machine. The figure’s pose
is at once graceful and forceful, and despite their adamant rejection of classical
arts, it is also very similar to the Nike of Samothrace.
Nike (Winged Victory) of Samothrace, c. 190 B.C.E. 3.28m high, Hellenistic Period, marge, (Musée du Louvre,
Paris), below photo.

Politics and War

Futurism was one of the most politicized art movements of the twentieth century. It
merged artistic and political agendas in order to propel change in Italy and across
Europe. The Futurists would hold what they called serate futuriste, or Futurist
evenings, where they would recite poems and display art, while also shouting
politically charged rhetoric at the audience in the hope of inciting riot. They
believed that agitation and destruction would end the status quo and allow for the
regeneration of a stronger, energized Italy.
These positions led the Futurists to support the coming war, and like most of the
group’s members, leading painter Boccioni enlisted in the army during World War
I. He was trampled to death after falling from a horse during training. After the
war, the members’ intense nationalism led to an alliance with Benito Mussolini and
his National Fascist Party.
Although Futurism continued to develop new areas of focus (aeropittura, for
example) and attracted new members—the so-called “second generation” of
Futurist artists—the movement’s strong ties to Fascism has complicated the study
of this historically significant art.

Key Artists:
60.Umberto Boccioni
61.Antonio Sant'Elia
62.Joseph Stella
63.Gino Severini
64.Natalia Goncharova

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