From the Paper "This paper will discuss the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), who is "the most famous artist who ever lived and many would say the greatest" (Hibbard 10). Michelangelo was an Italian Renaissance artist who is most widely known for his sculptures David and the Pieta, as well as the frescoed ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475 in the village of Caprese, where his father Lodovico Buonarroti, "was serving a short term as mayor (podesta) - almost his first job" (15). The family had once been wealthy, but by the time Michelangelo was born they had lost most of their fortune. Even so, they were proud people who continued to live as though they were still rich. For example, Michelangelo's father "took on the grand manner of a decadent nobleman and would not work" (Besdine 15). Michelangelo was the second of five ..."
From the Paper "Pablo Picasso's Weeping Woman with Handkerchief (1937) comes from one of his most productive periods, an era in which he was producing works demonstrating a new emotional tension, a brooding sense of foreboding, and a preoccupation with anguish and despair. His works display a concern with the mythological image of the Minotaur and the images of the dying horse and the weeping woman (Osborne 434). Picasso's works were involved with a new way of depicting perceptions, seeking the essence of a subject rather than a strict recreation of reality. Andre Breton stated that Picasso was an heir to Surrealism (Osborne 424). The art of the time was also much influenced by changes in science and society reflecting less reliance on tradition and a different view of the uncertainties of surface structure, and these conceptions were embodied in the idea of Modernism."
Abstract The paper compares and contrasts these two Renaissance interpretations of the Madonna and Child. It looks at the differing stylistic elements and discusses why the paintings are significant works of art for their timeframe. The attempt to blend the real world with the spiritual is explored and the painters? different techniques in their quest to achieve that blending are studied. The paper concludes with a concise summary of the similarities and the differences between these two paintings.
From the Paper "Raphael spent several years in Florence where he produced seventeen images of the Virgin Mary and Child. During that time, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were his primary teachers, which would account for his stylistic rendering of the Madonna and Child. The Small Cowper Madonna, which was done in oil on wood and was completed around 1505, reflects the innovations that he learned form his years with Leonardo. He mirrored the Florentine method of painting that concentrated on intimacy and simplicity of the setting."
Abstract The "American" public has always had an interest in the lives of Native Americans. During the early 1800, this curiosity blossomed in a fascination. The paper shows that unfortunately, most Americans were content to relegate all Native Americans into this caricature of the "noble savage", dehumanizing them, and few settlers sought to understand the culture of the Natives whose land they were occupying. Fortunately two nineteenth century artists, Edward Sheriff Curtis and George Catlin did not share the same view. This paper discusses how these men dedicated their lives to the study and preservation of Native American tribal culture for posterity by creating imagery based on the Native American people. Although their methodology, content, and style were dissimilar, (Curtis used the camera and Catlin worked with oil paint), their goal was the same, to capture and record the essence of America's indigenous people through art.
From the Paper "Countless numbers around the globe have benefited from the information gathered during the 1800's by Edward S. Curtis and George Catlin.
Without these records many of the customs and heritage that we know of as "Native American" might be lost today.
It is easy to be critical of Catlin's paintings when judging it against the realism of Curtis? photographs, but the goals of the two men were the same. The sincerity, accuracy, and honesty of the collections that were compiled by the ethnographists transcend their work from the category of mere art to the palate of life."
Abstract Before the notoriety of ancient Rome, Italy was the home of a nation called Etruria, whose inhabitants were known as Etruscans. Unfortunately, bitter Roman or ancient Greek historians have misconstrued the Etruscan legacy, in most cases tainting their accounts with a blatant anti-Etruscan bias. This paper considers why there exists such a lack of information about the Etruscans and further illuminates the extent to which surviving artwork offers insights into their culture.
From the Paper "From excavations at certain Etruscan sites, it is clear that art was a vital part of life. In Murlo, a seventh century Etruscan villa was unearthed revealing that large, painted terracotta panels typically adorned the entrances to buildings. Elaborate polychrome reliefs and frescoes indicate that the Etruscans used colour generously, even from the earliest times (Gore, 701)."
Abstract This paper is a review of the work of Henry Moore who had a long artistic career producing numerous sculptures. The writer reviews several pieces of his work. The paper presents Moore as a highly challenging artist whose work forces participation on the part of the viewer.
Table of Contents
"Reclining Woman"
"Reclining Figure"
"Family Group"
"Atomic Piece"/ "Nuclear Energy"
"Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece"
"Sheep"
From the Paper Henry Moore's long artistic career produced a multitude of sculptures with remarkably individualistic traits, although they are clearly the vision of a single creative mind. Their simplicity and mass combine with a curious gracefulness and lightness, making the viewer look closer and even attempt to interact with the work.
His sculpture "Reclining Woman", done in 1930 in Hornton stone, evokes the heavy power of his early works. Her big body is a series of undulating hills and simple peaks, like the rural countryside where Moore grew up.
Abstract This paper examines the art of Edgar Degas, a French Impressionist painter noted most for his ability to portray motion and sponteity in his work. It discusses how one of his favorite subjects to paint was dance and how his obsession with the female form drove him to become more skilled at painting dancing woman than anyone before or since. It looks at how none of his paintings were ever comissioned and he preferred to paint women going through the moments of daily life, unaware of the candid insights of voyeuristic beauty to be gained from their skilled observation.
From the Paper "Degas has captured young ballerinas of the Paris opera house at their most natural, when they are practicing unselfconsciously behind the scenes, not performing for the public. The ballet dancers resemble a sequence in a movie, all of the same fascinating for their totally innovating cuts, for the decentralized pagination, for the unusual angularity: in this sense, it is evident the influence from the orientalism, highly fashionable at his time, and from Japanese prints, of which Degas was a fond collector. "
Abstract This paper is about Sigmund Freud's concept of 'unconscious' and its relevance in the arts. The author discusses how Freud is commonly recognized as having invented the concept of the "unconscious". The author explaines that the subordination of the "pleasure principle" by the "reality principle" is done through a mental process that Freud refers to as sublimation. According to Sigmund Freud, dreams and fantasies (or phantasies) are the symbolic expression and fulfillment of wishes and desires that as a result of sublimation by the "reality principle" cannot be fulfilled through daily life and are consequently repressed into the ?unconscious.? To Freud, "the motive forces of fantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single fantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality" (Freud 485). Freud affirms that dreams are disguised, hallucinatory fulfillment's of repressed wishes. He concludes that if expressed in undisguised form, they would be so disturbing that it would wake the dreamer from sleep. Freud's fundamental assumption is that the sublimation of the artist's unsatisfied libido is responsible for producing all forms of art and literature whether it be painting, sculpting, or writing. David H. Richter notes in his introduction to "Sigmund Freud" that Freud was once criticized by Carl Gustav Jung, a fellow psychoanalytic theorist, for insinuating that artists were diseased individuals creating art out of their own personal neurotic needs. The writer feels that Freud insinuates that art is primarily an escapist method, that "in an ideal world in which everyone had matured sufficiently to replace the pleasure principle by the reality principle, there would be no need for art" (Storr 103).
From the Paper "The historical tradition of scholarly theory has been one in which literary texts are subjected to scrutiny regarding whether they are either implicitly or explicitly ideological in nature. Arguably so, nothing reflects a society's fears, hopes, and desires about gender, class, and power more than what the society maintains about art and artists. A literary text is credible of fully reflecting the culture in which it was written, that is to say, it has the potential to embody certain sociological assumptions presented in the dichotomy between "normal" and ?abnormal.? Sigmund Freud, the patriarch of psychoanalysis, is associated with Charles Darwin and Karl Marx as being "one of the three original thinkers who have most altered man's view of himself in the twentieth century" (Storr 145). Yet, even literary theorists, including Freud, realized that "any comprehensive vision of human nature such as he provides must have implications for the nature of happiness, and for the relation of man's natural capacities to his normal or ideal state" (Sousa 196). That is, numerous later theorists and critics believe that Freud's own theories about the function and nature of the mind uncovered some fundamental truths about how an individual's notions of "self" are formed and how culture and civilization operate and are affected by these notions. Coinciding with Freud's own account, the significance of everyday action is determined by motives that are far more numerous and complex than people are aware of or commonsense understanding takes into account. The most basic and constant of motives that influence our actions are those of the unconscious, moreover, those that are difficult to acknowledge or avow. Freud's conception of the unconscious and his rediscovery of the importance of dreams encouraged painters, sculptors and writers to pay serious attention to their inner world of dreams; to find significance in thoughts and images they previously would have dismissed as absurd or illogical. Therefore it is plausible that notions of art and literature as described by Sigmund Freud, are created through the ramifications of the unconscious or the sublimation of an unsatisfied carnal appetite."
Abstract Describes the artist's performance of Rrose Selavy. The Rrose persona. Its network of meanings. Relationship of Rrose to DuChamp's readymades. Commodity aspect of readymades. Postmodernism. Visual portrayal of women. Boundaries of sexual differences. History and ideas of assisted and semi-readymades. Notion of artistic function. Cites specific examples.
From the Paper "Marcel Duchamp's project is as complex, ambiguous, and rich as anything undertaken by any artist of the twentieth century. One of the most elaborate networks of meaning started by Duchamp derives from his 'performance' of Rrose Selavy, the female personification first used as a signature, mocked up in a series of posed drag photographs by Man Ray, and then persisting as an alter ego for Duchamp in many subsequent projects. The spectacle of a male artist who adopts a female persona and employs 'her' in the titles of various works, as the 'author' of other pieces, and simply as a sort of working fiction in his life raises questions of many kinds. Certainly the eroticization of the communication between artist and spectator, the performative nature of gender, the nature of the patriarchal art system and art history, and the meaning of authorship of works of art are all implicated in ..."
Abstract Discusses the controversy surrounding Marcel DuChamp's 1912 painting. Reaction to the artistically provocative painting and title at New York's 1913 Armory Show. Origins of DuChamp's painting. His ideas and experiments with abstraction and time-lapse photography. Rejection of "Nude" by the Cubists. His impact on American artists, critics and the public.
From the Paper "Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) became one of the best known painted images of the twentieth century when it developed into a major focal point for the hilarity and outrage that surrounded the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art. On view in New York, in February and March, the exhibition--which is better known as the Armory Show, after its location--was presented by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS) and assembled chiefly by two of its members, Arthur B. Davies and Walt Kuhn, who went to Europe to select the works. When the show opened it proved to be one of the wonders of the age, and a defining moment in the history of American art. The American public, and even the members of the AAPS, had never seen anything like these works, which ranged from Van Gogh and Gauguin to Picasso and Brancusi. Duchamp's painting, with its ..."
Abstract This paper discuses the importance of visual arts in a school's curriculum and focuses on the benefits of introducing visual art in student's elementary education curriculum. This paper not only focuses on the importance of visual art experience through student's point of view but also through the teacher's perspective. This paper emphasizes on how the experience of art make a student a better and more responsible individual of a society.
From the Paper "Till the eighteenth century the word art was broadly used in such a way that it reflected all forms of human skills and all the things which men were able to produce by skilled workmanship. Art is the imaginative and dexterous explication of experience in an aesthetic form, and throughout history it has played a crucial role in men's attempts to master and enjoy their surrounding and to liberate themselves."
Abstract The success of the American Revolution meant that the former colonists had to take on the difficult job of building a new kind of nation, with a new style of government, based on ideas about freedoms and rights that had never been tried before. The young country wanted to draw on what was best from its European heritage, but also to distinguish itself from Britain's culture which had been the principal cultural model. The paper shows that in the first century, the United States formally and informally used painting, architecture, and sculpture to carry important messages about the nature of American society and to develop styles that were distinctively American. Examples of two works from each of these branches of the arts demonstrate the variety of ways in which the country's art presented American ideals, promoted American self-confidence and developed an American character.
The works discussed are: Gilbert Stuart's painting "Vaughan Portrait" (1795); Thomas Jefferson's architectural design of the Virginia State Capitol Building (1785-99); the statue "Justice" (1824) by sculptor William Rush; Hiram Powers' bust of General Andrew Jackson (1835); Robert Mills' Treasury Building (1836-42) and Albert Bierstadt's painting "The Oregon Trail" (1869).
From the Paper "Almost as soon as the Revolution ended painters and engravers began to meet an overwhelming demand for portraits of George Washington and other leaders. In addition to being a major symbol of independence, Washington was also painted as the embodiment of "American virtue, restraint, courage, and strength--in short, of American republicanism" (Baigell 27). Gilbert Stuart, an American who trained in England, produced some of the finest and most popular versions in such paintings as George Washington or the Vaughan Portrait (1795). Stuart showed a rather "patrician and remote" Washington, partly because he trained in the aristocratic portrait tradition in England (Baigell 36). But, as Baigell notes, Stuart was a Federalist who did not approve of the growing popularity of Thomas Jefferson and his more democratic ideals. The Vaughan Portrait also reflects, therefore, "the mood of the Federalist hierarchy, fearful of runaway populism . . . and anxious to fix a national image in the minds of Americans to counter endemic localism" (Baigell 36-37)."
Abstract This paper explains that the innovation of the grid as an enduring motif in modern art and its offshoot, the straight-line, opened up a relatively unprecedented mode of expression for modern abstract artists. This paper explores the philosophy and work of Piet Mondrian and other artists of the Neo-Plasticism movement. The author points out that, for Mondrian, the grid was not simply a structural mechanism but an organic solution to the Modernist preoccupation with mind/matter dualism. Examples of Mondrian's works in color included.
From the Paper "The grid is clearly the perfect artistic means by which to affect this "liberation", as it provides a structure predicated on an inherent and infinite formlessness. Its strict horizontal and vertical axes proved an excellent format for the controlled interaction of pure, primary planes of colour, and functioned as an independent, artistically alive (plastic) organism in which ??everything counterbalances everything else.? "
Abstract Claude Monet and Rembrandt van Rijn are fundamentally different in their approaches to painting. This paper explores Monet's fascination with water and Rembrandt's love of chiaroscuro (the interplay of light and shadow) as well as both painter's philosophies on time - Monet often denies the existence of time altogether, whereas Rembrandt often makes the use of time an important subject matter of his work. The paper analyzes two works by Rembrandt - "Madonna of the Cat" (1654) and "A Woman Wading in a Brook" (1654) to show his use of chiaroscuro and his philosophy on time. The paper also discusses works by Monet including "La Grenouillere" (1868) and "Camille on her Deathbed", which show his fascination with water and his belief in art about art, rather than about reality.
From the Paper "Rembrandt's concern with experience and reality is inherent his work. In his etching of 1654 of Madonna of the Cat, he shows a scene which is full of meaning, and thus time and experience. There is a paradox in the scene itself involving the interplay of light and shadow, which is quite often the case with Rembrandt's work. In the center of the etching, Mary is shown cradling Jesus in her arms. Traditionally, the pair is shown with a halo surrounding the fontanel. Rembrandt's etching seems to do this, although in actuality what appears to be a halo is simply sunlight filtering though the window. In this context, he places Mary and Jesus in shadow, instead of in the light, which one would expect in a Christian scene. He suggests a more Protestant view of experience, in which shadow becomes a metaphor for ambiguity, everyday experiences, and the placing of the divine on a more human level. He suggests his belief that God is dwelling on earth among the normal, everyday people, rather than in the brilliantly lit skies of Heaven. This in and of itself is opposite from what the Greeks believed in."
Abstract This paper discusses the argument that the use of absinthe influenced the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. The paper develops this argument by first examining the history and known pharmacological effects of absinthe use, then cites historical evidence for Van Gogh's own absinthe abuse. The paper then details the specific works of art that may show signs of the artist's working under the influence of this powerful drug.
From the Paper "Few artists in history have been as professionally brilliant or as personally troubled as Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). Generations of scholars, historians, and scientists have studied van Gogh's life and his work, formulating myriad hypotheses about the relationship between his private struggles and his art. Among the most intriguing of these is the suggestion that van Gogh's use or abuse of absinthe played a role in the execution of his painting. While the evidence is far from conclusive, absinthe's negative effects on the mind and body are reasonably well understood, and van Gogh was a known absinthe drinker. Given these facts, it is a small leap to suppose that absinthe may have influenced some of the great artist's work."
