Visual Culture: A Vert Brief Review of Art from the Last 150 Years

In order to contextualize many of the discussions we have had over the past few weeks, it is important to look at some of the developments in Art over the last 150 years.

Part of the story of what has happened has to do with how artists have influenced each other. This influence has travelled from one artist to another, from one period to another, and from one culture to another.

We live in a period where global communication, awareness, and influence is easy. This was not always the case, but cultures have always influenced each other. Here is a 2000 year old example of this influence- the Silk Road:

The spread of Buddhism is a good example of how trade and travel across cultures spread ideas. Buddhism began in approximately 600 BCE in India. Today the religion does not really exist in India but over a 1000 year period it spread over the Asian continent and originally into areas of the Middle East. Buddhism was also affected by outside forces- we can see this through its art.

Before contact with Greek artists, Buddha was never pictured

Great Stupa of Sanchi, 3rd cent BCE

After introduction of Greek art, spread throughout region with Alexander the Great, Buddha is represented in human form but as a god, just as Greek deities were.

Gandhara Buddha, 1st cent BCE

Praxiteles, Hermes & Dionysus, 4th cent BCE

Aphrodite of Knidos

In western art (European), we can see how these depictions of human forms from ancient Greece also influenced artists over 1000 years later. The discovery and interest in ancient Greek texts and works of art led to a renewed interest in the human form.

It was said that the Greeks made their men into gods and their gods into men. Renaissance artists began to look at this model and integrate it into depictions of Christian stories.

Donatello, David with the head of Goliath, approx 1400 CE

Michelangelo, David, approx 1500 CE

Michelangelo, Pieta, approx 1500 CE

In earlier centuries, the emphasis had been on the Christian message, not on naturalistic portrayals of life either in the human form or in a believable sense of space.

Portal figures, Chartres Cathedral, approx 1150 CE

Cimabue, Madonna, Approx. 1300 CE

Renaissance artists included mythological content alongside a Christian message.

Boticelli, The Birth of Venus, approx. 1485 CE

Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, approx 1495 CE

Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam, from Sistine Chapel Ceiling, approx 1510 CE

Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel Ceiling, approx 1510 CE

Michelangelo, Adam and Eve, from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, approx 1510 CE

For centuries after the Renaissance, paintings focused on depicting an illusion of reality, whether historical or mythological subjects, portraits, still life, or landscapes were depicted. In fact, Art History, the study of art (started in the Renaissance) focused exclusively on the big three: painting, sculpture, and architecture. Other items that were designed such as furniture, tapestries, porcelain, and glass were relegated to a lower level and considered craft.

In Art History, the following images belong to a variety of defined periods, styles, and movements, however, for the sake of getting closer to the present, we will skip any effort to define and explain until we get to an Art Movement called Realism.

Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538

Peter Paul Rubens, Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, 1618

Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656

Jan Vermeer, Young Woman and Water Pitcher, 1665

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Grand Odalisque, 1814

In the mid-19th century, a group of French artists including Courbet, Millet, and Corot, gathered together as a group, declaring their interest in depicting different themes than their counterparts. These artists were not interested in mythology or history or in the exotic but in what could be literally perceived in their everyday lives. The Stonebreakers, below, is an example of the type of subject the Realists were interested in: toiling laborers. Gustave Courbet famously said, "Show me an angel and I'll paint you one!"

Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849

Realism is also an example of a group of artists declaring a new direction based upon common concerns. This search for something that seems newer and/or truer is a key factor of Modernism in art. For the next 100 years or so, artists will try to get at a universal or essential truth.

Each new group who superseded the last with a new idea was referred to as the avant-garde.

We have seen this painting in class. Manet is considered the father of Impressionism. He was loosely associated with Realism but followed his own direction, eventually influencing the Impressionists and showing with them.

Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863

The Impressionist movement was concerned with perception as well. They also painted subjects from their contemporary lives including landscapes, city scenes, and modern men and women in public. In Impressionism, the real subject is light and how light creates changes in color. This focus on color and atmosphere meant that the artists did not define forms with hard edges the way audiences were used to seeing them. This as much as some of the subject matter disturbed audiences.

Claude Monet, Haystack

Claude Monet, Rouen Cathedral

The first exhibition by this group of independent artists in 1874 was actually called

The Anonymous Society of Painters and Sculptors

but a scandalized critic tried to use the title of Monet's painting below as an insult, calling them all mere "impressionists." Instead, this title would eventually be adopted by the artists.

Claude Monet, Impression Sunrise, 1873

After the Impressionists were more or less accepted, a group of artists called the Post-Impressionists were the next avant-garde group to challenge beliefs about art. In part they payed homage to the Impressionists in how they used their brushes and in most of their chosen subjects. But they were very different in their use of space and color.

Van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889

Cezanne

Some early 20th century European movements included The Fauves ("Wild Beasts" a name given by another disgruntled critic)

Henri Matisse

And the German Expressionists, who used line and color in an emotional response to the times.

Ernst Kirchner

Abstract Expressionism was the name given to artists working in a manner similar to Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

Pollock in the act of painting

Mark Rothko

Willem deKooning, Woman I, 1952

The move toward abstract, non-objective, and expressionist tendencies started early in the 20th century and built, from artist to artist, and movement to movement, but that was not the only impulse in the early part of the century. Remember Duchamp? The man who defaced a print of the Mona Lisa? The Man who put a Urinal on its back and called it art?

The Dada Movement included a number of artists using parody, irony, and/or nonsensical content to call attention to the irrational and immoral nature of a society that would create the atrocities of WWI. All aspects of culture were implicated and attacked.

Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

John Heartfield, Don't Worry, He's a Vegetarian, 1936

The Dada movement influenced some artists in the middle of the century to turn away from abstraction and expressionism, This was essentially a scrutiny of post-war culture. This was Pop Art

Roy Lichtenstein

Andy Warhol

Along with Pop Art came events called "Happenings" where audiences became a part of the work as artists circled them with props and shouted.

Claes Oldenburg, Soft Toilet

Performance art can also see its roots in Dada. Happenings were an early form of performance.

Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking, 1967

Abramovic and Ulay, Performance

Abramovic and Ulay, Gallery Entrance

Commentary on the essentialist vision of Modernism (and the critics who proposed letting the materials speak for themselves- paintings are flat, sculpture has planes) resulted in

Minimalism

Donald Judd

Conceptualism placed the artist's idea above any concerns with form.

Robert Rauschenberg, Erased deKooning, 1953

Walter de Maria, Earth Room, 1977

The late 1960's and early 1970's saw a rise in Feminist Art as a part of the second wave of Feminism.

Guerilla Girls, Do Women have to be naked?, 1989

Institutional Critique in the 1970's, 80's and beyond called attention to the structures that society, but in particular, the art world, are based on.

Hans Haacke, Metromobilitan, 1985

Another common theme at the end of the 20th century was the purposeful lack of originality practiced by many artists. Borrowing imagery from others, and using it in parody or to create new meanings is a common aspect of art under Postmodernism. We call this borrowing (stealing?) Appropriation. Here Sherrie Levine takes it to an extreme: