AP European History, April, 2005
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Samuel Caruso
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Student Papers: Jina Choi Martha McLeod Kendal Nystedt |
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"All art is
social," wrote the historian James Adams, "because it is the result
of a relationship between an artist and his time."
Test
this statement. Analyze a particular work of art, anchoring it first
in the art of the Renaissance. Choose a theme evidenced in a
painting or other work of art, like sculpture or architecture.
Choose FOUR works and follow the Renaissance based theme you have
chosen through four different historical eras. Place it in its
historical context and see how well it illuminates both the theme
you have chosen and the social, political, economic, and cultural
elements of its time. Again, use a particular work of the
Renaissance as the seed, springboard, or portal, if you will, for a
larger discussion of European society or culture, and for a
discussion of those ideas that matter most to us today, such as the
personal character of a people at a given time, their education,
tastes, style, and deepest beliefs. How, for example, was a
particular work received? How might it have raised the
consciousness, or ire, of a people or government at a particular
time? In other words, show how the work of art you have chosen from
the past can reach us today, and, perhaps, speak to us more
cogently than an historical narrative.
Ideally, a third of your paper would deal with the work you have
selected: the artist, the genre, and the ideas it represents.
Another third would be your impressions, your response to the work,
and how you think it might capture the time and maybe even help us
to touch the past emotionally. And finally, another third would deal
with one or more aspects of European society that the work
especially brings to light.
Consider, for example, Michelangelo's Renaissance David as
compared to Bernini's Baroque David, Caravaggio's radical
style as in The Conversion of St. Paul, the self-portraits of
Rembrandt or his Nightwatch of the "Dutch Golden Age,"
Velasquez's Las Meninas, David's Death of Marat,
Goya's Third of May, 1808, Gericault's romantic The Raft
of the Medusa, any one of the many portraits of illustrious
figures from the past that I have shown you, like Titian’s
Charles V, or Holbein’s Henry VIII.
Consider also the following in writing your paper:
1. Who is the
artist? His family background, schooling, community, appearance,
interests, early and later life.
2. Explain the
era in which this person lived; the major religious, political,
economic, and social movements of the day.
3. Critique
this person’s body of work in general. What have critics said of his
or her work, pro and con?
4. Demonstrate
especially how the artist's work is tied to the religious,
political, and intellectual, developments of the era in which she or
he worked.
The
paper should be 8-12 pages, typed, double-spaced, 12 pt, and follow
the MLA. This is not a large research paper, so in choosing a theme
try to make it as narrow as possible. This is also not a biography
of the artist, though, of course, the two are inextricably linked.
Be clear and consistent in citing your sources; quotes should always
be introduced. Use McKay or Sister Wendy as a jumping off
point, but for no more than that. Remember, you must anchor, begin
your paper, with a Renaissance idea. Here are some of the things we
considered about the Renaissance earlier this year:
– “Rebirth” of
interest in classical antiquity; Passion for Greco-Roman culture.
– Urban;
Secular
– What is the
good life? How should we live our lives here on earth?
– Interest in
individual ability (l’uomo universale); “virtu;”
Personality, uniqueness, genius
– Christian
dialogue with Paganism
– Wealthy;
elite. Not a mass movement
– Trade;
Merchant Guilds; Patronage
– Signori
; Princely Courts; Political power
– Display of
wealth & power ceremonially.
– Civic
loyalty; Parishes; Confraternities
–
“Condottierri”
– “princely”
popes
–
Self-conscience awareness of unique time in which they live
– material
pleasures; leisure to appreciate arts
– Humanism –
literary movement
– studia
humanitatas; “literary culture needed by anyone who would be
educated and civilized.”
– Humanists as
Christian.
– balance;
harmony; restraint; Imitation of nature- reality of object.
– Focus on
humans; Realistic portrayal of human nude.
–
Mathematical: laws of perspective. Organization of space and light.
– Portraiture-
reveals inner quality of subject. Portraits of women
– Art that
manifests corporate power.
– Religious
art; Adam and Eve; Sin; Martyrdom; Epiphanies; Saints
– Art that
serves educational/religious purpose
–
classical/mythological/pagan themes
– Castiglione,
The Courtier; The Courtly ideal, “the gentleman.”
– Women:
“Querrelles de Femmes” (The woman question); Marriage; children
– Painters:
Giotto, Masaccio, Botticelli, daVinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian
– Sculptors:
Donatello, Ghiberti, Michelangelo
– Architects:
Brunelleschi, Bramanti, Michelangelo
– Others: Jan
van Eyck; Hieronymus Bosch; Durer; Holbein the Younger; Bruegel the
Elder
NOTES:
This
writing project can be used for topics other than art as long as it
is anchored in the Renaissance. Tracing Renaissance ideas through
time, such as “virtu,” the nature of a “gentleman” as in
Castiglione’s work, or the prince/politician as in Machiavelli’s
work, or the “women’s question,” (“Querrelles de Femmes”), which
seemed to lend itself to discussion of their treatment in Western
Art, are all viable, and for those teachers preparing students for
the Advanced Placement Exam in European history in May, it can
provide students with a good review of several eras as well.
I’ve
attached three papers that I received this year. They are from
sophomores and seniors. and represent a good sample of how the
project went. I received a good many papers on the treatment of
women in Western Art, especially on the nude and on sexuality. But I
also received papers on the treatment of landscapes, self-portraits,
violence, children, letters, dogs, ships, anti-Semitism, Adam and
Eve, mythology, and a dozen others. The best papers used a good deal
of comparative analysis and referred frequently back to the
Renaissance as I suggested they must do. Doing this again next year,
I would encourage this even more.
Here is a
brief summary of Western art culled from various sources:
RENAISSANCE
An art
of line and edges; stories and figures from the bible, classical
history and mythology; commissioned portraits; the patronage of the
wealthy, merchants and popes; use of perspective, chiaroscuro
(light and dark) to achieve rounded effect; secular backgrounds and
material splendor (Botticelli, Birth of Venus; Fra Filippo
Lippi, Mother and Child; Raphael, School of Athens;
Michelangelo, David and Creation of Adam; Bronzino,
Portrait of a Young Man. Values: secularism, individualism,
virtu (excellence), balance, order, passivity, and calm.
BAROQUE
(Catholic Counter-Reformation but also Absolutism)
My favorite.
Theatrical; the art style that is ornate, more colorful, richer in
texture and decoration, more light and shade-apparently less
control. Scenes embody mystery and drama, violence and spectacle,
suggesting a deliberate striving after effect; the Catholic church
commissions artists to stir religious emotions and win back
defectors (Bernini, The Ecstasy of St. Theresa; Artemisia
Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes; Caravaggio, The
Conversion of St. Paul; El Greco, The Burial of Count Orgaz;
Rembrandt, Supper at Emmaus; Rubens, The Elevation of
the Cross). Values: sensualism, dynamism, emotion.
NORTHERN
REALISM - (Seventeenth Century)
Genre or
everyday scenes exhibit mathematical and geometric values of
seventeenth-century science. Middle-class Dutch patrons commissioned
secular works: portraits, still-life; landscapes, and genre
paintings Vermeer, Woman with a Water Jug; van Ruisdael,
View of Haarlem; Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp).
Values: quiet opulence, comfortable domesticity, realism.
ROCOCO -
(Eighteenth Century)
Art of the
French aristocracy portraying nobility in sylvan settings or ornate
interiors; Venuses and Cupids abound; ladies wear silk finery
alongside similarly dressed cavaliers (Fragonard, The Swing;
Watteau, Return from Cythera). Rococo art is "candy-box"
art-saccharine, frivolous, delicate. Values: ornamentation,
elegance, sweetness.
NEOCLASSICISM
- (Eighteenth Century)
A return to
classical antiquity for inspiration; scenes are historical and
mythological; figures appear to be sculpted; the appeal is to the
intellect, not the heart; emotions are restrained, and balance is
achieved (David, Socrates Taking the Hemlock; Oath of the
Horatii; The Death of Marat; Ingres, Oedipus and the
Sphinx). Values: reason, order, balance, reverence for
antiquity.
ROMANTICISM-
(Nineteenth Century)
A reaction
against the "cold and unfeeling" reason of the Enlightenment and
against the destruction of nature resulting from the Industrial
Revolution. Stress is on light, color, and self-expression, in
opposition to the emphasis on line and firm modeling typical of
neoclassical art (Gericault, Raft of the Medusa; Delacroix,
Liberty Leading the People; J. M. W. Turner, The
Slave Ship; Goya, The Third of May). Values: emotion,
feeling, morbidity, exoticism, mystery.
IMPRESSIONISM
- (Nineteenth Century)
An attempt to
portray the fleeting and transitory world of sense impressions based
on scientific studies of light; forms are bathed in light and
atmosphere; colors are juxtaposed for the eye to fuse from a
distance; short, choppy brush strokes to catch the vibrating quality
of light (Monet, Rouen Cathedral; Renoir, Le Moulin
de La Galette; Degas, Ballet Rehearsal; Seurat,
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte). Values: the
immediate, accidental, and transitory.
EXPRESSIONISM-
(Nineteenth and Twentieth Century)
Indebted to
Freud; art tries to penetrate the facade of bourgeois superficiality
and probe the psyche, that which lurks beneath an individual's calm
and artificial posture (Munch, The Scream; Kirchner, The
Red Cocotte; Kokoschka, The Tempest; Beckmann, The
Night; van Gogh, Starry Night and self-portrait).
Values: subliminal anxiety; dissonance in color and perspective;
pictorial violence-manifest and latent.
SURREALISM -
(Nineteenth and Twentieth Century)
Also indebted
to Freud; explores the dream world, a world without logic, reason,
or meaning; fascination with mystery, the strange encounters between
objects, and incongruity; subjects are often indecipherable in their
strangeness; the beautiful is the quality of chance association
(Dali, The Persistence of Memory; Ernst, Two Children Are
Menaced by a Nightingale; Miro, Dog Barking at the Moon;
Chagall, self-portrait with Seven Fingers). Values: the dream
sequence; illogic; fantasy.
CUBISM -
(Twentieth Century)
No single
point of view; no continuity or simultaneity of image contour; all
possible views of the subject are compressed into one synthesized
view of top, sides, front, and back; picture becomes a multifaceted
view of objects with angular, interlocking planes (Picasso, Les
Demoiselles d Avignon and Guernica) Value: a new way of seeing;
a view of the world as a mosaic of multiple relationships; reality
as interaction.
ABSTRACT
EXPRESSIONISM - (Twentieth Century)
Nonrepresentational art; no climaxes; flattened-out planes and
values; the real appearance of forms in nature is subordinated to an
aesthetic concept of form composed of shapes, lines, and colors
(Moore, Reclining Figure; Rothco, Ochre on Red).
Value: personal and subjective interpretation.
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