Expert answer:Comparing Movements and Works of Art
Expert answer:Select two works of art, each from a different movement. Select
movements from belowLate MedievalNeoclassicismRomanticismRealismImpressionismModernismIn your paper,Describe these two works of art by applying at least three (3) questions art historians ask and four (4) words art historians use. (view attached docs for notes)Explain how iconographic, historical, political, philosophical,
religious, and social factors of the movements are reflected in each
work of art.Include images of both works of art in an appendix at the end of your paper.Find work of art from links below and cite properly.Art and artists | Tate (http://www.tate.org.uk/art) Art Institute of Chicago (http://www.artic.edu/) Art Renewal Center Artist Index (http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artistindex.php) The Frick Collection ( http://www.frick.org/art)Google Art Project (http://www.googleartproject.com/) Guggenheim (http://www.guggenheim.org/) Louvre Museum Official Website (http://www.louvre.fr/en) The Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org) MoMA | The Museum of Modern Art (https://www.moma.org/collection/) National Gallery of Art(https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintingsThe San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) (https://www.sfmoma.org/artists-artworks/SIRIS – Smithsonian Institute Research Information System (https://sirismm.si.edu/siris/ariquickstart.htm)Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York (http://www.cooperhewitt.org/) The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/) Uffizi, Uffizi gallery, Florence (http://www.uffizi.com/) Vatican Museums – Official web site (http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MV_Home.html) Victoria & Albert Museum (http://www.vam.ac.uk/) Web Gallery of Art (http://www.wga.hu/) WebMuseum: Famous Artworks exhibition (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/) Whitney Museum of American Art (http://whitney.org/
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How Old Is It?
Before art historians can write a history of art, they must be sure they know the date of each work they
study. Thus an indispensable subject of art historical inquiry is chronology , the dating of art objects and
buildings. If researchers cannot determine a monument’s age, they cannot place the work in its
historical context. Art historians have developed many ways to establish, or at least approximate, the
date of an artwork. Physical evidence often reliably indicates an object’s age. The material used for a
statue or painting—bronze, plastic, or oil-based pigment, to name only a few—may not have been
invented before a certain time, indicating the earliest possible date (the terminus post quem : Latin,
“point after which”) someone could have fashioned the work. Or artists may have ceased using certain
materials—such as specific kinds of inks and papers for drawings—at a known time, providing the latest
possible date (the terminus ante quem : Latin, “point before which”) for objects made of those
materials. Sometimes the material (or the manufacturing technique) of an object or a building can
establish a very precise date of production or construction. The study of tree rings, for instance, usually
can determine within a narrow range the date of a wood statue or a timber roof beam. Documentary
evidence can help pinpoint the date of an object or building when a dated written document mentions
the work. For example, official records may note when church officials commissioned a new altarpiece—
and how much they paid to which artist. Internal evidence can play a significant role in dating an
artwork. A painter might have depicted an identifiable person or a kind of hairstyle, clothing, or
furniture fashionable only at a certain time. If so, the art historian can assign a more accurate date to
that painting. Stylistic evidence is also very important. The analysis of style —an artist’s distinctive
manner of producing an object—is the art historian’s special sphere. Unfortunately, because it is a
subjective assessment, an artwork’s style is by far the most unreliable chronological criterion. Still, art
historians find stylistic evidence a very useful tool for establishing chronology.
What Is Its Style?
Defining artistic style is one of the key elements of art historical inquiry, although the analysis of
artworks solely in terms of style no longer dominates the field the way it once did. Art historians speak
of several different kinds of artistic styles. Period style refers to the characteristic artistic manner of a
specific era or span of years, usually within a distinct culture, such as “Archaic Greek” or “High
Renaissance.” But many periods do not display any stylistic unity at all. How would someone define the
artistic style of the second decade of the new millennium in North America? Far too many crosscurrents
exist in contemporary art for anyone to describe a period style of the early 21st century—even in a
single city such as New York. Regional style is the term that art historians use to describe variations in
style tied to geography. Like an object’s date, its provenance , or place of origin, can significantly
determine its character. Very often two artworks from the same place made centuries apart are more
similar than contemporaneous works from two different regions. To cite one example, usually only an
expert can distinguish between an Egyptian statue carved in 2500 bce and one made in 500 bce . But no
one would mistake an Egyptian statue of 500 bce for one of the same date made in Greece or Mexico.
Considerable variations in a given area’s style are possible, however, even during a single historical
period. In late medieval Europe, French architecture differed significantly from Italian architecture. The
interiors of Beauvais Cathedral ( Fig. I-3 ) and the church of Santa Croce (Holy Cross, Fig. I-4 ) in Florence
typify the architectural styles of France and Italy, respectively, at the end of the 13th century. The
rebuilding of the east end of Beauvais Cathedral began in 1284. Construction commenced on Santa
Croce only 10 years later. Both structures employ the pointed arch characteristic of this era, yet the two
churches differ strikingly. The French church has towering stone ceilings and large expanses of coloredglass windows, whereas the Italian building has a low timber roof and small, widely separated clear
windows. Because the two contemporaneous churches served similar purposes, regional style mainly
explains their differing appearance. Personal style , the distinctive manner of individual artists or
architects, often decisively explains stylistic discrepancies among paintings, sculptures, and buildings of
the same time and place. For example, in 1930, the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986)
produced a series of paintings of flowering plants. One of them— Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. 4 ( Fig. I-5 )—is a
sharply focused closeup view of petals and leaves. O’Keeffe captured the growing plant’s slow,
controlled motion while converting the plant into a powerful abstract composition of lines, forms, and
colors (see the discussion of art historical vocabulary in the The Words Art Historians Use section). Only
a year later, another American artist, Ben Shahn (1898–1969), painted The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti
( Fig. I-6 ), a stinging commentary on social injustice inspired by the trial and execution of two Italian
anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Many people believed that Sacco and Vanzetti had
been unjustly convicted of killing two men in a robbery in 1920. Shahn’s painting compresses time in a
symbolic representation of the trial and its aftermath. The two executed men lie in their coffins.
Presiding over them are the three members of the commission (headed by a college president wearing
academic cap and gown) who declared that the original trial was fair and cleared the way for the
executions. Behind, on the wall of a stately government building, hangs the framed portrait of the judge
who pronounced the initial sentence. Personal style, not period or regional style, sets Shahn’s canvas
apart from O’Keeffe’s. The contrast is extreme here because of the very different subjects that the
artists chose. But even when two artists depict the same subject, the results can vary widely. The way
O’Keeffe painted flowers and the way Shahn painted faces are distinctive and unlike the styles of their
contemporaries. (See the “ Who Made It? ” discussion .) The different kinds of artistic styles are not
mutually exclusive. For example, an artist’s personal style may change dramatically during a long career.
Art historians then must distinguish among the different period styles of a particular artist, such as the
“Rose Period” and the “Cubist Period” of the prolific 20th-century artist Pablo Picasso.
What Is Its Subject?
Another major concern of art historians is, of course, subject matter, encompassing the story, or
narrative; the scene presented; the action’s time and place; the persons involved; and the environment
and its details. Some artworks, such as modern abstract paintings ( Fig. I-2 ), have no subject, not even a
setting. The “subject” is the artwork itself—its colors, textures, composition, and size. But when artists
represent people, places, or actions, viewers must identify these features to achieve complete
understanding of the work. Art historians traditionally separate pictorial subjects into various categories,
such as religious, historical, mythological, genre (daily life), portraiture, landscape (a depiction of a
place), still life (an arrangement of inanimate objects), and their numerous subdivisions and
combinations. Iconography —literally, the “writing of images”—refers both to the content, or subject, of
an artwork, and to the study of content in art. By extension, it also includes the study of symbols ,
images that stand for other images or encapsulate ideas. In Christian art, two intersecting lines of
unequal length or a simple geometric cross can serve as an emblem of the religion as a whole,
symbolizing the cross of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. A symbol also can be a familiar object that an artist
has imbued with greater meaning. A balance or scale, for example, may symbolize justice or the
weighing of souls on judgment day ( Fig. I-7 ). Artists may depict figures with unique attributes
identifying them. In Christian art, for example, each of the authors of the biblical gospel books, the four
evangelists ( Fig. I-8 ), has a distinctive attribute. People can recognize Saint Matthew by the winged
man associated with him, John by his eagle, Mark by his lion, and Luke by his ox. Throughout the history
of art, artists have used personifications —abstract ideas codified in human form. Because of the fame
of the colossal statue set up in New York City’s harbor in 1886, people everywhere visualize Liberty as a
robed woman wearing a rayed crown and holding a torch. Four different personifications appear in The
Four Horsemenof the Apocalypse ( Fig. I-9 ) by German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). The late-15thcentury print is a terrifying depiction of the fateful day at the end of time when, according to the Bible’s
last book, Death, Famine, War, and Pestilence will annihilate the human race. Dürer personified Death
as an emaciated old man with a pitchfork. Famine swings the scales for weighing human souls (compare
Fig. I-7 ). War wields a sword, and Pestilence draws a bow. Even without considering style and without
knowing a work’s maker, informed viewers can determine much about the work’s period and
provenance by iconographical and subject analysis alone. In The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti ( Fig. I-6 ),
for example, the two coffins, the trio headed by an academic, and the robed judge in the background
are all pictorial clues revealing the painting’s subject. The work’s date must be after the trial and
execution, probably while the event was still newsworthy. And because the two men’s deaths caused
the greatest outrage in the United States, the painter-social critic was probably an American.
Who Made It?
If Ben Shahn had not signed his painting of Sacco and Vanzetti, an art historian could still assign, or
attribute (make an attribution of), the work to him based on knowledge of the artist’s personal style.
Although signing (and dating) works is quite common (but by no means universal) today, in the history
of art, countless works exist whose artists remain unknown. Because personal style can play a major role
in determining the character of an artwork, art historians often try to attribute anonymous works to
known artists. Sometimes they assemble a group of works all thought to be by the same person, even
though none of the objects in the group is the known work of an artist with a recorded name. Art
historians thus reconstruct the careers of artists such as “the Achilles Painter,” the anonymous ancient
Greek artist whose masterwork is a depiction of the hero Achilles. Scholars base their attributions on
internal evidence, such as the distinctive way an artist draws or carves drapery folds, earlobes, or
flowers. It requires a keen, highly trained eye and long experience to become a connoisseur , an expert
in assigning artworks to “the hand” of one artist rather than another. Attribution is subjective, of course,
and ever open to doubt. For example, scholars continue to debate attributions to the famous 17thcentury Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. Sometimes a group of artists works in the same style at the
same time and place. Art historians designate such a group as a school . “School” does not mean an
educational institution or art academy. The term connotes only shared chronology, style, and
geography. Art historians speak, for example, of the Dutch school of the 17th century and, within it, of
subschools such as those of the cities of Haarlem, Utrecht, and Leyden.
Who Paid for It?
The interest that many art historians show in attribution reflects their conviction that the identity of an
artwork’s maker is the major reason the object looks the way it does. For them, personal style is of
paramount importance. But in many times and places, artists had little to say about what form their
work would take. They toiled in obscurity, doing the bidding of their patrons , those who paid them to
make individual works or employed them on a continuing basis. The role of patrons in dictating the
content and shaping the form of artworks is also an important subject of art historical inquiry, more so
today than at any time in the past. In the art of portraiture, to name only one category of painting and
sculpture, the patron has often played a dominant role in deciding how the artist represented the
subject, whether that person was the patron or another individual, such as a spouse, son, or mother.
Many Egyptian pharaohs and some Roman emperors, for example, insisted that artists depict them with
unlined faces and perfect youthful bodies no matter how old they were when portrayed. In these cases,
the state employed the sculptors and painters, and the artists had no choice but to portray their patrons
in the officially approved manner. This is why Augustus, who lived to age 76, looks so young in his
portraits ( Fig. I-10 ). Although Roman emperor for more than 40 years, Augustus demanded that artists
always represent him as a young, godlike head of state. All modes of artistic production reveal the
impact of patronage. Learned monks provided the themes for the sculptural decoration of medieval
church portals ( Fig. I-7 ). Renaissance princes and popes dictated the subject, size, and materials of
artworks destined for display in buildings also constructed according to their specifications. An art
historian could make a very long list of commissioned works, and it would indicate that patrons have
had diverse tastes and needs throughout history and consequently have demanded different kinds of
art. Whenever a patron contracts with an artist or architect to paint, sculpt, or build in a prescribed
manner, personal style often becomes a very minor factor in the ultimate appearance of the painting,
statue, or building. In these cases, the identity of the patron reveals more to art historians than does the
identity of the artist or school. The portrait of Augustus illustrated here ( Fig. I-10 )—showing the
emperor wearing a corona civica , or civic crown—was the work of a virtuoso sculptor, a master wielder
of hammer and chisel. But scores of similar portraits of this Roman emperor also exist today. They differ
in quality but not in kind from this one. The patron, not the artist, determined the character of these
artworks. Augustus’s public image never varied.
The Words Art Historians Use
As in all fields of study, art history has its own specialized vocabulary consisting of hundreds of
words, but certain basic terms are indispensable for describing artworks and buildings of any
time and place. They make up the essential vocabulary of formal analysis , the visual analysis of
artistic form. Definitions and discussions of the most important art historical terms follow.
Form and Composition
Form refers to an object’s shape and structure, either in two dimensions (for example, a figure painted
on a wood panel) or in three dimensions (such as a statue carved from a marble block). Two forms may
take the same shape but differ in their color, texture, and other qualities. Composition refers to how an
artist composes (organizes) forms in an artwork, either by placing shapes on a flat surface or by
arranging forms in space.
Material and Technique
To create art forms, artists shape materials (pigment, clay, marble, gold, and many more) with tools
(pens, brushes, chisels, and so forth). Each of the materials and tools available has its own potentialities
and limitations. Part of all artists’ creative activity is to select the medium and instrument most suitable
to the purpose—or to develop new media and tools, such as bronze and concrete in antiquity and
cameras and computers in modern times. The processes that artists employ, such as applying paint to
canvas with a brush, and the distinctive, personal ways that they handle materials constitute their
technique . Form, material, and technique interrelate and are central to analyzing any work of art.
Line
Among the most important elements defining an artwork’s shape or form is line . A line can be
understood as the path of a point moving in space, an invisible line of sight. More commonly, however,
artists and architects make a line visible by drawing (or chiseling) it on a plane , a flat surface. A line may
be very thin, wirelike, and delicate. It may be thick and heavy. Or it may alternate quickly from broad to
narrow, the strokes jagged or the outline broken. When a continuous line defines an object’s outer
shape, art historians call it a contour line . All of these line qualities are present in Dürer’s Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse ( Fig. I-9 ). Contour lines define the basic shapes of clouds, human and
animal limbs, and weapons. Within the forms, series of short broken lines create shadows and textures.
An overall pattern of long parallel strokes suggests the dark sky on the frightening day when the world is
about to end. Color Light reveals all colors. Light in the world of the painter and other artists differs from
natural light. Natural light, or sunlight, is whole or additive light . As the sum of all the wavelengths
composing the visible spectrum , it may be disassembled or fragmented into the individual colors of the
spectral band. The painter’s light in art—the light reflected from pigments and objects—is subtractive
light . Paint pigments produce their individual colors by reflecting a segment of the spectrum while
absorbing all the rest. Green pigment, for example, subtracts or absorbs all the light in the spectrum
except that seen as green. Hue is the property giving a color its name. Although the spectrum colors
merge into each other, artists usually conceive of their hues as distinct from one another. Color has two
basic variables—the apparent amount of light reflected and the apparent purity. A change in one must
produce a change in the other. Some terms for these variables are value or tonality (the degree of
lightness or darkness) and intensity or saturation (the purity of a color, its brightness or dullness). Artists
call the three basic colors—red, yellow, and blue—the primary colors . The secondary colors result from
mixing pairs of primaries: orange (red and yellow), purple (red and blue), and green (yellow and blue).
Complementary colors represent the pairing of a primary color and the secondary color created from
mixing the two other primary colors—red and green, yellow and purple, and blue and orange. They
“complement,” or complete, each other, one absorbing the colors that the other reflects. Artists can
manipulate the appearance of colors, however. One artist who made a systematic investigation of the
formal aspects of art, especially color, was Joseph Albers (1888–1976), a German-born artist who
emigrated to the United States in 1933. In connection with his studies, Albers created the series Homage
to the Square —hundreds of paintings, most of which are color variations on the same composition of
concentric squares, as in the illustrated example ( Fig. I-11 ). The series reflected Albers’s belief that art
originates in “the discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect.” * Because the composition in
most of these paintings remains constant, the works succeed in revealing the relativity and instability of
color perception. Albers varied the hue, saturation, and value of each square in the paintings in this
se …
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