From the Paper
"Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was one of four siblings who became artists in the period of intellectual and artistic ferment that saw out the last decades of the old century and extended beyond World War I. Duchamp's early interest was in painting and Cubism and much of his most influential work was related to Dada practice. But Duchamp was ultimately the most independent of artists--eventually becoming independent of art itself. Much of his influence derived from gestures or positions related to the nature of art, and a great deal of his fame rests on works consisting of ordinary objects altered or 'readymade.' But Duchamp's masterpiece is usually held to be the glass, metal, and paint construction entitled The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23), frequently known simply as Large Glass."

From the Paper
"Clement Greenberg's enormously influential definition of modernism embodies a teleological approach to art that was rejected by the Pop artists, among others, who constituted part of the reaction to 'modernism' (or, at least, to Greenberg's modernism) that began in the 1960s. Greenberg made an initial distinction between art, which took in "advanced painting," and kitsch, the German word for "disposable, poorly-designed consumer objects" that had been flooding the world in the wake of the Industrial Revolution (Stiles 2). Such objects fed the popular taste for illusionist representation, sentiment, anecdote, and decoration that was, Greenberg believed, beneath consideration for true art. In his view the European avant-gardes of the pre-1940 era embodied this disdain for the popular and a concern with the higher purposes of art. Greenberg's theory of modernism..."

Abstract
The paper discusses Henry Moore, an influential English abstract sculptor, who lived from 1898 to 1986. The paper presents his family and educational background that helped form and mold his art. The author feels that Moore's prime concern was the material; he loved working in stone and used it almost exclusively in his work.

From the Paper
"Moore's artistic talent was discovered early when an art teacher took interest in his work while he was still in secondary school. His family did not encourage him in his artistic pursuits; and so he began his career as a teacher and then went into the army. In 1919, he received a grant to study for two years at the Leeds School of Art. Here he discovered a book by Roger Fry called "Vision and Design", which changed forever the way he looked at art. Fry's book showed him less traditional forms of art such as Mexican sculpture and Negro art."

Tags: education, material, stone, reclining, figure, mother, child

Abstract
This paper reviews five different paintings by five different artists over different time periods. It shows how each to some extent is influenced by the one preceding it and creates a controversy that at that time is negative but later becomes an inspiration for others. From Giorgione's "Sleeping Venus" and Titan's "Venus of Urbino" to Goya's "Naked Maja" and Manet's "Olympia" it shows how paintings of nude women who are brazen in their sensuality and whose depiction does not conform to the styles of the time. Each review is illustrated by a picture.

From the Paper
"Painted even before Goya's nude Maja this is said to be the one of the first nude paintings of Spain and the only remaining nude by Vel?zquez. (Author not available, 1998) Inspired by Titan's Venus it again shows a nude woman reclining, yet the difference is the model does not face the viewer. We see only her naked back while her face is shown tantalizingly in the mirror. Accompanying her is the mythological cupid who holds the mirror. Painted against a dark background the nude model is tantalizingly mysterious as the viewer tries to glance at the features reflected in the mirror. The sensual pose is accentuated through the blood red curtain which make the background of the picture and suggests that the woman may be a courtesan like that of Manet's Olympia. "

Tags: goya, manet, giorgione, manet, velazquez, naked, sensuality

From the Paper
"In her book, "Philosophy in a New Key", Susanne Langer draws a provocative distinction between verbal discourse and works of art. According to Langer, works of art are presentational symbols. These symbols conceptualize the flux of impressions in the sensory field and transform them into a concrete form. They articulate complex and subtle feelings and emotions which would be incommunicable through language. Presentational symbols differ from Discursive symbols (language) in that they have no vocabulary or syntax. One cannot, according to Langer, obtain meaning from a part of an art work in the same way as one can from part of a sentence. The art work has meaning only in as much as one scrutinizes the work as a whole, a constituent element has no intrinsic meaning. Presentational symbols are no less capable of articulation than are words. However, the laws ... "

From the Paper
The purpose of this research is to examine the changes that occurred in society and the Church because of (or as a reflection of) changes in music and art during the transitional period between late Gothic and Renaissance.

Early Renaissance art was the natural outgrowth of the new humanism which was replacing medieval thought. The world changed a great deal in the period between the ousting of the medieval ways and the upsurge of humanism and the ways of the Renaissance. As E. H. Gombrich writes in his The Story of Art, in the middle of the twelfth century, when the Gothic style was first developed, Europe was still mainly a thinly populated continent of peasants with monasteries and barons' castles as the important centers of power and education.

The ambition of the Great Bishops' Sees to have immense ... "

From the Paper
"Claude Monet was one of the most important of the artists who developed the Impressionist movement. Monet experimented with the effects of atmosphere and light, and what concerned him more and more were the techniques required to effect a direct transcription of visual sensation to the canvas. His works show a variety while also reflecting the deepest concerns of the artist in a consistent fashion:

Neither his choices of subject nor his modes of seeing, composing, and executing were accidental, nor were they dictated by a systematic theory. . . Yet, beneath the eddies in the flow of his art always lay an unswerving determination to paint truthfully the world in which he lived."

From the Paper
"Pablo Picasso is without doubt the best known artist in
this century, even though he may not be the most revered. Still, critics and art lovers alike never stop praising the works of Picasso, partly for their brilliance, partly for the originality he constantly displayed, and to a degree also for the variety of moods and styles he delved in.

"One painting alone will tell you very little of the art
of Pablo Picasso," write the editors in the Modern Reference
Library ("The Club of the Wild Men" 388-391). They state that Picasso was "forever changing his style" in order to "attack some new problem in Art." The editors continue: He is said never to have left a problem unsolved; but the minute he is satisfied with what he has done, he turns to something else. So you can see that he has not, as so many (...)"

From the Paper
"Paul Gauguin painted his "Whence come we? What are we? Whither go we?" during his second stay in Tahiti, and it is a vast work that embodies the themes and images that he made his own based on his trips to Tahiti. This is a massive work which today is found in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It was painted in 1897 during a period of despondency, and the work can be seen as an expression of the inner turmoil experienced by the artist. The painting's underlying sense of mortality is spiritually oriented and can be seen as a statement by the painter of his sense of devotion to nature, to Tahiti, to the people and to the life he lived there. It reflects the artist's mood and in a sense foreshadows his attempted suicide."

From the Paper
" Photography has played an important role in our society since the process was invented over 150 years ago. Frequently, the eye and the camera are compared to each other. This comparison, although a useful fiction at times, ignores many important differences between the function of a camera taking still pictures using a film, and the human eye and brain viewing the world. Photographs are almost always seen as inherently truthful, an accurate recording of the events that happened when the photograph was shot. Certain functions and limitations inherent to photography not present in the human visual system can make an ordinary, un.retouched photograph seem misleading. This paper will briefly discuss the nature of photography in our society and why photographs are seen as being truthful, and then (...)"

From the Paper
"Early in 1968, artist Andy Warhol was shot and seriously wounded by a mentally disturbed woman. After a long convalescence, Warhol commented that, "When I got shot, two bullets went through my stomach, liver, spleen, esophagus, left lung and right lung. The doctors and everyone else, including me, were sure I was going to die, so we all got ready, and then I didn't do it. But I always wished that I had died, and I still wish that, because I could have gotten the whole thing over with" (Kroll 64). At age 58, in 1987, Warhol did die, and the impassioned leader of the pop tradition since the 1960s left a legacy of art, silkscreen, and philosophy that would forever change the art world.

As one of the acknowledged leaders of the modern "pop" tradition, Warhol brought new and interesting insights into the ... "

From the Paper
"This study will explore the life and art of 19th Century Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh. The thesis of the study will be the argument that without the many problems in his life (emotional, psychological, spiritual, physical, romantic, economic), it is highly unlikely that Van Gogh could have produced the astonishingly vital and passionate works which he did produce and which speak to us today, a century later, as powerfully as they spoke to those in his own time.

.... in their Introduction to Van Gogh, writes that we will likely never know beyond a doubt the nature of Van Gogh's alleged physical infirmities, including the possibility that he was an epileptic. However, ... add, the important point to keep in mind in exploring Van Gogh and his troubles is that at the heart of all those ... "

From the Paper
"This paper will explore Robert Mapplethorpe's works and his photography subjects, themes, concepts and influences. It will also touch on Mapplethorpe's personality and how it affected his work and on his relationship to the New York art scene. Mapplethorpe was a contemporary American photographer whose works continue to influence the genre. He traversed uncharted territory with the camera, if not exactly in his choice of subjects, then in the manner in which those subjects are dealt with and in the unusual emotional aura that encompasses the photographs, creating perplexing feelings in the person looking at them. It is the ability to produce these feelings, along with the excellent technicality of Mapplethorpe's works, that made him one of the better known photographers in the United States. "

From the Paper
"This paper will be concerned with Pablo Picasso's reactions to war. During the First World War, Picasso did not directly address the theme of war in his paintings. Rather, the violence and brutality of the war were symbolized in his artistic style itself. After 1920, and particularly after the Second World War, the horrors of war were increasingly used as subject matter in Picasso's works. Some of Picasso's greatest works dating from the 1930s through the 1950s, such as Guernica (1937), Charnel House (1944), Massacre in Korea (1951), and the War panel in the Temple of Peace (1952), show the dehumanization process which occurs when innocent men, women and children are subjected to war. This paper will discuss these works, with the point of view that they adequately capture the essence of the tragedy of war.

By the time of the First World War, Picasso had made his ... "

From the Paper
"Many fashion experts believe Italian fashions are a mix of imagination, craftsmanship and folk wisdom. Noted among them, particularly for his use of color, is Gianni Versace. The purpose of this paper will be to discuss Versace, including background information on him, the sources of his inspiration, the trends he has introduced as well as the personality and talent that combine to make him one of the leading fashion designers of today.

Italians are obsessed by style and one who had become a leader in setting that style is Versace. Born in 1946 in the Italian town of Reggio Calabria, he was one of three children. His mother was a well-known dressmaker and some of his most treasured memories as a child are of peeking into her workshop and watching as she made beautiful dresses." (

Tags: BIOGRAPHIES