Art in the service of the Catholic Counter-Reformation — and in the service of absolute monarchs
Context: Council of Trent (1545–1563) — art should emotionally move believers back to Catholicism (vs Protestant plain churches). Characteristics: dramatic diagonal composition, tenebrism, illusionistic ceilings (di sotto in su — from below upward), rich color, emotional intensity. Key figures: Caravaggio (revolutionary tenebrism), Bernini (Ecstasy of St. Teresa — sculpture + light + architecture), Rubens (Flemish — fleshy figures, mythologies, religious), Velázquez (Las Meninas — meta-painting, atmosphere), Rembrandt (Dutch — psychological depth). Architecture: St. Peter's Square (Bernini's colonnade), Versailles (Hardouin-Mansart).
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism: reason, virtue, civic duty, antiquity. Reaction to Rococo frivolity. David's Oath of the Horatii.
Neoclassicism
The Enlightenment's art — rational, morally serious, inspired by ancient Rome and Greece
Context: Enlightenment + excavation of Pompeii/Herculaneum (1738–). Winckelmann: 'noble simplicity and calm grandeur' of Greek art. Characteristics: clear outlines, smooth modeling, austere subjects from antiquity, moral seriousness (vs Rococo playfulness). Jacques-Louis David: Oath of the Horatii (1784) — duty over family. Death of Marat (1793) — political martyrdom. Supported French Revolution and Napoleon. Ingres: smooth academic painting, ideal forms. Architecture: neoclassical revival in USA (Jefferson's Capitol), UK (British Museum), France (Panthéon). Napoleon: used neoclassicism to legitimize empire through Roman imagery.
The reaction against Enlightenment rationalism — emotion, nature, and the terrifying sublime
Context: French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, industrialization. Against Neoclassicism's reason → celebrated emotion, imagination, individual genius, nature. The sublime (Burke, Kant): awe in the face of overwhelming nature. Caspar David Friedrich: Wanderer above the Sea of Fog — solitary figure before vast nature, 'Rückenfigur.' J.M.W. Turner: atmospheric, dissolving forms (Rain, Steam and Speed — precursor of Impressionism). Géricault: Raft of the Medusa (1819) — contemporary disaster, heroic scale. Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People — color, movement, political. Goya: Saturn Devouring His Son — dark side of Romanticism. Francisco Goya: Disasters of War — anti-war.
Impressionism
Impressionism: short brushstrokes, light effects, outdoor painting (en plein air), modern life. Monet, Renoir, Degas.
Impressionism
The movement that changed how painters looked at light — and scandalized the Paris art world
First exhibition 1874 (independent, rejected by Salon). Name: critic's insult from Monet's Impression, Sunrise. Characteristics: short, broken brushstrokes, pure color (not mixed on palette), optical mixing (viewer's eye blends), outdoor painting, ordinary modern subjects (cafés, dance halls, rivers, gardens). Monet: serial paintings, water lilies. Renoir: Le Moulin de la Galette, soft figures, social gatherings. Degas: ballet dancers, racehorses, unusual compositions (influenced by photography and Japanese prints). Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt: major female Impressionists. Photography's influence: snapshot compositions, ordinary moments.
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism: Van Gogh (emotion), Cézanne (structure/planes), Seurat (pointillism), Gauguin (primitivism).
Post-Impressionism
Four artists who pushed Impressionism further in four different directions
Not a unified movement — four distinct responses to Impressionism's limitations. Cézanne: underlying geometric structure (cylinder/cone/sphere), multiple viewpoints, passage — influenced Cubism. Van Gogh: emotional intensity through distorted line and color — influenced Expressionism. Seurat: Pointillism (divisionism) — tiny dots of pure color, optical mixing, La Grande Jatte (1886), scientific approach — influenced Op Art. Gauguin: rejected Western civilization, Tahiti, symbolic color, flat planes — influenced Fauvism and Primitivism. Cézanne called 'the father of modern art' — his geometric reduction of form led directly to Cubism (Picasso) and abstraction.
Realism
Realism: ordinary people, social conditions, unidealized. Courbet, Millet, Daumier. Reaction against Romanticism.
Realism
The art of the working class — depicting ordinary people and social conditions without idealization
Context: 1848 revolutions, industrialization, social photography. Rejection of Romanticism's idealized emotion and Neoclassicism's ancient subjects. Gustave Courbet: 'The Burial at Ornans' (1850) — village funeral on monumental scale usually reserved for heroes. 'The Stone Breakers' — laborers, no heroism. Manifesto: 'Paint what you can see.' Jean-François Millet: The Gleaners (1857) — peasant women, dignity in labor. Honoré Daumier: caricatures, social satire (Le Charivari). Photography (1839): threatened painting's documentary role → paradoxically freed painting to be expressive. American Realism: Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer. Social realism: 20th century continuation (Diego Rivera murals).
Wild color freed from natural appearance — the first avant-garde shock of the 20th century
1905 Salon d'Automne, Paris. Critic Louis Vauxcelles: 'Donatello among the wild beasts' (fauves). Color used purely expressively — not to describe natural appearance. Thick brushstrokes, flat planes, intense hues. Henri Matisse: Joy of Life (1906), The Dance (1910) — color as structure and emotion. André Derain: London bridges series — Thames in orange and red. Maurice de Vlaminck: even more violent color. Influence: German Expressionism (Die Brücke), Abstract Expressionism (Matisse's influence on color field). Fauvism short-lived (1905–1907) — Braque met Picasso and shifted to Cubism. Matisse continued coloristic approach throughout career.
Conceptualism and Land Art
Conceptual art: idea over object. Land Art: Robert Smithson (Spiral Jetty), Christo (wrapped buildings). Site-specific.
Conceptual and Land Art
When art escapes the gallery — ideas, sites, and the natural environment as medium
Conceptual art (Sol LeWitt, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, 1967+): idea is primary; physical object optional or unnecessary. Dematerialization: challenge gallery system and commodity status of art. Land Art / Earthworks (1960s–70s): Robert Smithson — Spiral Jetty (Great Salt Lake, 1970), 6,600-ton basalt coil. Michael Heizer: Double Negative (Nevada, 240,000 ton displacement). Walter De Maria: Lightning Field (New Mexico, 400 poles). Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Running Fence, Wrapped Reichstag (1995), The Gates (Central Park 2005). Documentation: photographs and films become the artwork accessible to the public. Questions: Who owns it? Can it be collected? What is an 'artwork'?
Street Art and Graffiti
Street art: public space reclaimed. Banksy (stencil, satire), Basquiat (SAMO), Shepard Fairey (Obey).
Street Art and Graffiti
Art that bypasses the gallery — and the political questions it raises
Photography (1839): Daguerre. Threatened painting's documentary role → freed art to be expressive. Cindy Sherman, Andreas Gursky.
Photography and Art
How the invention of photography transformed painting — and became an art form in its own right
Daguerre (1839): first practical photographic process. Initial fear: painting is dead. Reality: photography freed painting from documentation → Impressionism, abstraction. Pictorialism (1880s–1900s): photography as fine art — soft focus, painterly. Alfred Stieglitz (291 gallery, Camera Notes): champion of photography as art. Straight photography: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams — pure photographic values, sharp focus. Documentary: Dorothea Lange (Migrant Mother, 1936). Conceptual photography: Cindy Sherman (Untitled Film Stills). Typologies: Bernd and Hilla Becher (industrial structures). Large-format: Andreas Gursky (99 Cent, most expensive photograph). Digital: questions authenticity, originality.