From the Paper "In relief sculpture created by Florentine artists in the period 1400-1430 many of the most significant advances of Renaissance art were initiated long before painters took them up. In the works of Donatello (c. 1386-1466) and Lorenzo Ghiberti (c. 1381-1455) the antique became an important source of inspiration and the use of artificial perspective was introduced. Relief sculpture is a sometimes neglected aspect of the general subject of Renaissance sculpture. Because the appearance of freestanding statues in the fifteenth century is one of the most significant results of the renaissance of classical ideals in Italy, other types of sculpture tend to receive less attention. Yet, primarily through the efforts of Donatello and Ghiberti, much of the relief sculpture of the first decades of the Quattrocento was as forward-looking as anything produced in the other mode. This.."
From the Paper "Charles I (r. 1625-49) was a poor statesman whose deep belief in the divine right of kings was adhered to with a stubbornness that eventually led him to the scaffold. His single greatest accomplishment, his art collection, was assembled in the service of that ideal notion of kingship and it was not allowed to stand as his memorial. Charles managed the kingdom badly, was a poor diplomat and politician, provided unsound leadership, and refused to recognize the implacable nature of changes in society. The arena in which he did excel was that of display. Despite the rebellions, the civil wars, the foreign wars, the struggles with Parliament, and, most of all, the stricken economy, Charles' reign was marked by splendid entertainments, costly show, and the assembling of one of the finest art collections in Europe. When added to the perception of Charles' popish tendencies, his.."
From the Paper "Sally Mann is a photographer whose work has consistently challenged conventional notions of subject and technique. Her broadest fame derives from the somewhat controversial photographs of her children published in Immediate family (1992). The themes of that work, childhood and coming-of-age, had also been explored in, respectively, the "Dream Sequence" (1971) and At twelve: Portraits of young women (1988). But other portfolios, such as her "Landscapes" (1972-73), the Lewis Law Portfolio (1977), a series of "Platinum Prints" (1978-80), and her 1997 "Georgia" and Virginia" series, demonstrate a range of subject matter that belies any attempt to limit Mann to domestic subjects or a topic such as puberty. Instead the distinguishing characteristic of her work is the manner in which developments in technique (coupled with great openness on technical matters such as choice ..."
From the Paper "Christo is a representative of the post-modern era in art, bringing together several of the elements of that era, including the use of public space as art, using and commenting on technology, finding new relations between the personal and the public, and so on. Christo has crated massive works which have also captured a good deal of publicity, making him one of the better known artists of the time, though some of the publicity has been negative, as when a woman was killed by one of the umbrellas Christo had placed in a field in California.
Modernism and postmodernism are forces that have been in competition but that are also part of a flow in the same direction, a flow of artistic movement yearning toward change within a technological age. Modernism was part of an effort to create a new environment to replace the old around the turn of ..."
From the Paper "The purpose of this research is to examine two paintings by Paul Gaugin, A Swineherd, Brittany (1888), and Ia Orana Maria (1891). The plan of the research will be to set forth the background and context in which Gaugin created each painting, and then to compare and contrast analytically the content and apparent intent informing them, both intrinsically and as part of the larger scheme of Gaugin's body of work.
Gaugin's A Swineherd, Brittany, an oil painting on canvas, hangs in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Measuring 29" x 36(", A Swineherd, Brittany is a horizontally oriented picture depicting a pastoral landscape that would have been familiar to Gaugin during his stay in Pont-Aven in Brittany. In the right foreground, a rocky pasture of grass along either a pond or a river, are the figures of a swineherd and two pigs. The swineherd stand ..."
Compares artists' use of own image or perspective to an effect on the viewer in George Catlin's "Portrait of Mah-To-Toh-Pa--Mandan," Eugene Delacroix's "Women of Algiers" and Winslow Homer's "A Visit from the Old Mistress."
2,475 words (approx. 9.9 pages), 4 sources, 1999, $ 87.95
Abstract Nineteenth-century painters were sometimes travelers who ventured beyond frontiers and returned with visual reports of their encounters with other cultures. In an age when engraved drawings were an accepted part of newspaper reportage artists' reports were not likely to be challenged.
From the Paper "Nineteenth-century painters were sometimes travelers who ventured beyond frontiers and returned with visual reports of their encounters with other cultures. In an age when engraved drawings were an accepted part of newspaper reportage artists' reports were not likely to be challenged. But painters' accounts were not accompanied by texts and they often took care to insist on the fact of their presence at the scene and among their subjects. This served as a warrant of their reliability and facilitated acceptance of ideas or attitudes implicit in their representations of other cultures. Artists thus presented themselves as surrogates for their audiences--confirming, modifying, reinforcing, and re-shaping perceptions of other cultures. These painters employed different visual strategies as the means of emphasizing their roles as witnesses, and ..."
Abstract " Frank Stella is an American painter who remains poplar after almost four decades of work. He was born in 1936 and studied at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts under Patrick Morgan and at Princeton University under William Seitz and Stephen Greene.
From the Paper " Frank Stella is an American painter who remains poplar after almost four decades of work. He was born in 1936 and studied at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts under Patrick Morgan and at Princeton University under William Seitz and Stephen Greene. After 1958 he lived in New York. He came to the fore in the 1960s as one of the most inventive of the new school of Post-Painterly Abstraction, a reaction against Abstract Expressionism. He was then exhibited widely in New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. A retrospective exhibition in 1970 was held under the auspices of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He began as one of many post war minimalist painters, but then his work took a different route from the others, leading him to a "second career" in abstract expressionism. In this career, he struggled with..."
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
From the Paper "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. In the first century, therefore, 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 will demonstrate the variety of ways in which the country's art presented American ideals, promoted American self-confidence, and developed ..."
Abstract Pablo Picasso's painting Mother and Child (1921) at the Art Institute of Chicago represents a woman seated on the seashore holding a baby in her lap. The naked child leans backward, reaching his hand up toward the mother and she gazes down and into his eyes. The woman is dressed in a simple white gown reminiscent of the clothing of the ancient Romans or Greeks.
From the Paper "Pablo Picasso's painting Mother and Child (1921) at the Art Institute of Chicago represents a woman seated on the seashore holding a baby in her lap. The naked child leans backward, reaching his hand up toward the mother and she gazes down and into his eyes. The woman is dressed in a simple white gown reminiscent of the clothing of the ancient Romans or Greeks. This work, which is oil on canvas and measures 143.6 x 162.6 cm, features soft colors with pinks, pale blues, and browns dominating. The colors of the mother and child are skin tones heightened with a great deal of pink. The composition is extremely simple, with the figures occupying the lower half of a diagonal line that runs from the lower left corner of the canvas to the upper right and is carried through by the line of the woman's arm. The space is extremely shallow even though a great..."
An examination of the 19th century romantic and democratic response to the Industrial Revolution, including major artists and works, themes and subjects.
900 words (approx. 3.6 pages), 5 sources, 2000, $ 31.95
Abstract "Triggering a radical restructuring of the society on the economic, social and emotional levels, the Industrial Revolution inspired the rise of Romanticism in American art. The Industrial Revolution shattered the old order of authority and rationalism.
From the Paper "Triggering a radical restructuring of the society on the economic, social and emotional levels, the Industrial Revolution inspired the rise of Romanticism in American art. The Industrial Revolution shattered the old order of authority and rationalism. Romanticism encompassed the dual contradictory sentiments of this period: 1) the popular faith in the idea of progress and the democratization of society and 2) the pessimism of nostalgia (Garrett, 21-22). With the dissolution of traditional spiritual values and the emergence of paradoxical scientific beliefs wrought by the turbulent social and economic changes of the Industrial Revolution, people were thrust into a state of confusion and loneliness. Therefore, while Romanticism celebrated the rise of the individual against traditional authority, it also tapped into their longing for a lost world of..."
From the Paper "Art education assures the fullest possible integration of art with life. Whether students are being taught to make art, to learn about the art of the past, or to experience art critically and sensually, the goal is to achieve a 'literacy' in art equivalent to the literacy, numeracy, and other skills that every educated person must possess. This is, of course, an ideal goal since American society tends to view any activity so frivolous and nonproductive as art with a jaundiced eye. The struggle that faces those who believe in this goal, therefore, is to explain, or demonstrate, convincingly how art is an essential human activity completely on a par with all the traditional 'academic' skills of which this manifestly practical society approves. Two of the major documents in support of this idea are John Dewey's Art as Experience (1934) and Herbert Read's Education through Art..."
Abstract This paper focuses on the theme of Egyptian funerary art, illustrating its purpose to link the living world with the after life. The paper describes the Ka, the central life force which sustains one and which needs to be taken care of after death. The wall art and the statues found in Egyptian tombs provides knowledge of the Egyptian religious beliefs.
From the Paper "Religion attempts to answer several basic questions: who are we, where did we come from, and where are we going. Nothing serves a better example of man's attempt to answer these questions than Egyptian funerary art. The theme of Egyptian art is not to portray the living, except to provide guidance for the dead, but was meant to help link the living world with the after life."
Tags: religion, life, afterlife, ka, ba, akh, statues, mummy, tomb
Abstract This paper discusses the legacy of Sandro Botticelli, known as one of the best and most spiritually enlightened of the Neo-Platonic Renaissance painters who was eventually hired by the Pope to work on the Sistine Chapel. He was born to an artisan-class family of tanners where his artistic tempermant was ignored and started his working career as a goldsmith until he received his first apprenticeship as an artist. Eventually he rose to fame, gained more commissions, both creating panels and the like for rich merchant families and frescoes and other church decorations. He became known for his dreamy and melancholic mythic religiousity and implications of human form and feature and ranked among the greatest of the allegorical and mystical painters of his time.
From the Paper "Sandro's original apprenticeship as an artist was under the legendary Fra Filippo Lippi. In many ways this was a fortunate choice in masters; Botticelli's mystical and dreamy nature fit well with Lippi's penchant for the ideal and devotional. An apprenticeship in one of the more modern, naturalistic studios might have created a far different Sandro Botticelli, or hidden his actual talent. (Botticelli, 13) Lippi's influence is obvious in most of his student's early work, to such a degree that most of the earliest Botticelli paintings are virtually recreations of Lippi pieces, keeping content and design and scene in common while changing method and form ever so slightly. The resemblance between Botticelli's Madonna Guidi and Lippi's Madonna and Child with Angel is far from accidental."
Abstract This paper looks briefly at the background of the Spanish painter Salvador Dali and the Australian painter Brett Whiteley, two extraordinary artists from the surrealist movement. It details their artistic influences, views on life and makes an attempt at finding method in their madness. It discusses how it was an 'insatiable craving for sex', money and fame that drove Dali to artistic genius, while for Whiteley, it was alcohol and narcotics. It compares and contrasts some of their famous works, their styles and their perceived meanings.
From the Paper "Dali was a Spanish painter and writer who played a very significant part in the surrealist movement. From youth onwards, he was a very talented and recognised artist, with many of his works being displayed and published. He was an artist whose life was dominated largely by an 'insatiable craving for sex', money and fame. Dali was also fascinated with the aspect of death, combined with the popular beliefs of society. Much of his work was based on influences gained from other artists as well as both contemporary philosophy and science. His role models were Goya, El Greco, Durer, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Velaquez. In all, this represented the characteristically wide-ranging nature of Dali's way of thinking: the comic and the diabolic rub shoulders with serious classicism, with levity and gravity reflected to an equal degree. It was written that "Dali uses realistic items to reveal his dream-like ideas. His paintings are executed with infinite care and sometimes depict minute detail... The imaginary things depicted are presented in startling, distorted and fantastic ways, or else in natural, incredible combinations of parts of the human figure in tortured, writhing gestures." "
Abstract The paper provides a detailed analysis, as well as a personal review, of the oil and magna painting "Stepping Out' by artist Roy Lichtenstein, which is displayed in the The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The paper shows how "Stepping Out" is a work of Pop Art and seems to epitomize the superficiality of the dating experience in America. The paper also describes other works of art by Roy Lichtenstein.
From the Paper "Artists like Lichenstein and Warhol represented the natural creative progression of twentieth century art. Moving away from the abstract expressionist vogue they depicted the everyday reality of mass culture. Themselves emerging from a background in commercial art, they used familiar objects both to allow viewers to relate directly to art and to offer social satire.
Contemporaries, Lichtenstein and Warhol matured in their art under the heritage of American forerunners Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns who planted the seeds of Pop Art. Rauschenberg constructed collages from household objects and Johns repetitively painted American flags and bull's-eye targets. These artists in turn emerged under the influence of European forerunners like Richard Hamilton who produced Just What Is It That Makes Today's Home So Different, So Appealing? in 1956."
