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Tuesday, 31 December 2013
Thursday, 5 December 2013
Baroque - 1590-1725
The Baroque is a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance and music. The style began around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to most of Europe. The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation, that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement.
The Baroque era is sometimes divided into roughly three phases for convenience:
Early Baroque, c.1590–c.1625
High Baroque, c.1625–c.1660
Late Baroque, c.1660–c.1725. Late Baroque is also sometimes used synonymously with the succeeding Rococo movement.
The aristocracy also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. The oval replaced the circle as the center of composition, that centralization replaced balance, and that coloristic and "painterly" effects began to become more prominent.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640), was a Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality. GianLorenzo Bernini (also spelled Gianlorenzo or Giovanni Lorenzo) (Naples, 7 December 1598 – Rome, 28 November 1680) was an Italian artist and a prominent architect who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture.
Rembrandt van Rijn
Rembrandt was born in Leiden on July 15, 1606 - his
full name Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. He was the son of a miller.
Despite the fact that he came from a family of relatively modest
means, his parents took great care with his education. Rembrandt began
his studies at the Latin School, and at the age of 14 he was enrolled
at the University of Leiden. The program did not interest him, and he
soon left to study art - first with a local master, Jacob van
Swanenburch, and then, in Amsterdam, with Pieter Lastman, known for
his historical paintings. After six months, having mastered everything
he had been taught, Rembrandt returned to Leiden, where he was soon
so highly regarded that although barely 22 years old, he took his
first pupils. One of his students was the famous artist Gerrit Dou.
Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam in 1631; his marriage in
1634 to Saskia van Uylenburgh, the cousin of a successful art dealer,
enhanced his career, bringing him in contact with wealthy patrons who
eagerly commissioned portraits. An exceptionally fine example from
this period is the Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts (1631, Frick
Collection, New York City). In addition, Rembrandt's mythological and
religious works were much in demand, and he painted numerous dramatic
masterpieces such as The Blinding of Samson (1636,
Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt). Because of his renown as a
teacher, his studio was filled with pupils, some of whom (such as Carel
Fabritius) were already trained artists. In the 20th century, scholars
have reattributed a number of his paintings to his associates;
attributing and identifying Rembrandt's works is an active area of art
scholarship.
Rembrandt produced many of his works in this
fashionable town house in Amsterdam (above left). Purchased by the
artist in 1639, when he was 33, it proved to be the scene of personal
tragedy: his wife and three of his children died here. The house
became a financial burden, and in 1660 Rembrandt was forced to move. A
new owner added the upper story and roof, giving it the appearance it
still bears. In 1911 the Dutch movement made it a Rembrandt museum
-preserving it both as a shrine of a revered national artist and as an
imposing example of 17th Century Dutch architecture.
In contrast to his successful public career, however,
Rembrandt's family life was marked by misfortune. Between 1635 and 1641
Saskia gave birth to four children, but only the last, Titus,
survived; her own death came in 1642- at the age of 30. Hendrickje
Stoffels, engaged as his housekeeper about 1649, eventually became his
common-law wife and was the model for many of his pictures. Despite
Rembrandt's financial success as an artist, teacher, and art dealer,
his penchant for ostentatious living forced him to declare bankruptcy
in 1656. An inventory of his collection of art and antiquities, taken
before an auction to pay his debts, showed the breadth of Rembrandt's
interests: ancient sculpture, Flemish and Italian Renaissance
paintings, Far Eastern art, contemporary Dutch works, weapons, and
armor. Unfortunately, the results of the auction - including the sale
of his house - were disappointing.
These problems in no way affected Rembrandt's work; if
anything, his artistry increased. Some of the great paintings from
this period are The Jewish Bride (1665), The Syndics of the Cloth Guild (1661, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Bathsheba (1654, Louvre, Paris), Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph
(1656, Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Kassel, Germany), and a
self-portrait (1658, Frick Collection). His personal life, however,
continued to be marred by sorrow. His beloved Hendrickje died in 1663,
and his son, Titus, in 1668- only 27 years of age. Eleven months
later, on October 4, 1669, Rembrandt died in Amsterdam.
Presentation 2
Remrandt. Film
Presentation 2
Remrandt. Film
Wednesday, 4 December 2013
Mannerism - 16c.
Mannerism,
the artistic style which gained popularity in the period following the High Renaissance, takes as its ideals the work of Raphael and Michelangelo Buonarroti. It is considered to be a period of technical accomplishment but also of
formulaic, theatrical and overly stylized work.
Mannerist Art is characterized by a complex composition, with muscular and
elongated figures in complex poses. Discussing Michelangelo in his journal, Eugène Delacroix gives as good a description as any of the limitations of Mannerism:
"All that he has painted is muscles and
poses, in which even science, contrary to general opinion, is by no means the
dominant factor... He did not know a single one of the feelings of man, not one
of his passions. When he was making an arm or a leg, it seems as if he were
thinking only of that arm or leg and was not giving the slightest consideration
to the way it relates with the action of the figure to which it belongs, much
less to the action of the picture as a whole... Therein lies his great merit;
he brings a sense of the grand and the terrible into even an isolated
limb."
In addition to Michelangelo, leading Mannerist artists included Rosso Fiorentino, Pontormo, and Parmigianino. By the late 16th century, there were several anti-Mannerist attempts to
reinvigorate art with greater naturalism and emotionalism. These developed into
the Baroque style, which dominated the 17th century.
Tuesday, 3 December 2013
Classicism - 16c.
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard
for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists
seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and
restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clarkobserved, "if we object to
his restraint and compression we are simply objecting to the classicism of
classic art. A violent emphasis or a sudden acceleration of rhythmic movement
would have destroyed those qualities of balance and completeness through which
it retained until the present century its position of authority in the
restricted repertoire of visual images." Classicism, as Clark noted,
implies a canon of widely accepted ideal forms, whether in the Western canon
that he was examining inThe Nude (1956), or the Chinese classics.
As the name for an
epoch, classicism can be placed in the time period between 1750 and 1840. From
a socio-political perspective, this equates to the transition between
absolutism and the Enlightenment. Instead of an all-encompassing humanism, now
special knowledge is required; also in art, logic and clarity were to reign,
mirroring morals and ethos.
The School of Athens or Scuola di Atene in Italian, is one
of the most famous frescoes by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was
painted between 1510 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate
with frescoes the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic
Palace in the Vatican. The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to
be decorated, and The School of Athens the second painting to be finished
there, after La Disputa, on the opposite wall. The picture has long been seen
as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical
spirit of the High Renaissance.
Monday, 2 December 2013
The Renaissance-13-16c.
The Renaissance was a great cultural movement that started
in Italy in the 1300's and spread through Europe. By 1600, the Renaissance had
affected nearly all of Europe. Florence, Italy and the European region of
Flanders were the centres of the Renaissance art movement.
In the 1200's,
Florentine painter Giotto was the first artist to depict people and nature
realistically. He was also the first artist to create frescoes, or paintings on
damp plaster. Giotto's work portrayed great emotion, and his paintings were set
in realistic settings. Although Giotto lived before the Renaissance, his work
influenced many Renaissance painters, architects, and sculptors.
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo , was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.
Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time. A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. His output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century.
Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification.
In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries.
In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine one"). One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.
Presentation 2
Film
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