skip to main |
skip to sidebar
American Social Realism: Isabel Bishop (1902-1988). From top, Still Life with Oranges, 1928 / School Girls, 1974 / Bishop printing
Socialist Realism: Otakar Švec’s Stalin sculpture in Prague, 1951
Vija Celmins, Untitled (Ocean), 1990-1995
Colter Jacobsen, Bridal Veils Falls, 2007
Invested in representing reality, Realism in art manifested in part as a socially and politically movement. Social realism endowed painting and sculpting with the mission of representing (underrepresented) social reality.
The persistent interest in investigating and representing what is "real" has motivated artists to investigate visual perception, the passage of time and its effect on spaces and objects, and the material reality of artistic production. Do you think that Realism can be meaningful in terms of art today? Does realism have to involve pictorial representation?
Reading for next week: excerpts of Van Gogh's letters from Theories of Modern Art (ed. Herschel Chipp)
William Blake, Portrait of Newton, 1795
Bas Jan Ader, I'm too sad to tell you, 1970
Gottfried Helnwein, Untitled (After Caspar David Friedrich), 1998
Kathy Prendergast, A Dream of Discipline, 1989-2006
An increasing interest in subjectivity and individual expression in the face of oppressive regimes and economies led artists to new territories: mining the unconscious and turning towards nature in order to encounter the Sublime, and exoticizing outsiders (the insane) and foreign lands (the East), in a search of more "authentic" experiences. This complex of ideals appealed to individual human emotion in a novel way. William Blake's interior vision, Gericault's highly dramatic treatment of differences and tragedies, and Hudson River Valley landscape paintings are examples of three distinct directions these new ideas blossomed into.
Threads of the Romantic are still very relevant in many contemporary artworks. Discussion questions: How do you think the emotional potency of early Romantic works functions today? And, can you think of examples of contemporary Romantic works?
Reading for the coming week: The Nature of Realism, by Linda Nochlin
El Lissitzky
This week we talked about art as an agency for change both preceding and during modern revolutions. Do you think that art has a responsibility to be of use in the way that the Bolsheviks did? Can you think of any examples of contemporary works that seriously challenge either the sociopolitical status quo or the role of art in society?
Abraham Lincoln, 1862
This week's New Yorker has a short review by Peter Schjeldahl of a show at the Guggenheim that focuses on early 20th century Classicism, politics and beauty in art. You can download it here.
Last Thursday we talked about some of the ways power has influenced art and architecture in relation to ideals of beauty. Defining beauty and its role in art was complicated. Ideals of beauty seem to be dynamic, shifting through time. Can you think of any specific formal or material properties that you relate to either beauty or power (or both)?
Vito Acconci, Following Piece, 1969
Sophie Calle, The Shadow, 1981: "In April 1981, at my request, my mother went to a detetctive agency. She hired them to follow me, to report my daily activities, and to provide photographic evidence of my existence."
Jeff Wall, The Destroyed Room, 1978
Henry Darger, from The Story of the Vivian Girls
Roni Horn, Dead Owl, 1998
Giuseppe Penone working on an Atlas Cedar, 1999
Shana Lutker, Dream Book, 2003-2004
Las Meninas, by Michel Foucault (Required reading)
Also, a profile of Baldessari by Calvin Tompkins was published in the New Yorker last week in anticipation of the opening of Pure Beauty at the Met October 20.
Last week we talked about the role of narrative in art history and about various narrative strategies. The images above include works that are based around blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality in storytelling. Many of the two-dimensional works include more than one panel or page, in order to directly address the perception of a linear passage of time, something that is often fundamental in narratives. Some are more performative and are experienced by the viewer either as an image with text, as a text alone, or as a sculpture.
Do you think that it's possible to tell a story using a single image or object?
Also, can you think of any examples of current non-filmic work that employs narrative?
Caravaggio, St. Jerome Writing, c 1600
Diego Velasquez, Old Woman Frying Eggs, 1618
Diego Velasquez, The Waterseller at Seville, 1623
This week we saw high-contrast chiaroscuro in Jarman's "Caravaggio," and talked about the cinematic drama of baroque painting and how it functioned for a struggling Catholic church. The paintings and sculptures at the end of the renaissance and into the baroque began to favor dynamism over classical symmetry and depictions of flesh over divine iconography.
Why do you think that in the baroque paintings we've looked at (and those above) perspective has become such a secondary strategy?
Also, we talked about the anachronistic props in the film at the end of class. Can you think of other examples of films or artworks that incorporate techniques, styles, or subjects from various time periods--and to what effect?
