Visual Fine Arts

This is the homepage for the Visual Fine Arts category, a subcategory of The Arts.

The Renaissance

Rebirth of art primarily in Italy

• Michelangelo

  • Sistine chapel ceiling (View)

    • Features The Creation of Adam (fresco)

  • The Last Judgment (View)

    • Mary and Christ in the middle (fresco)

  • David sculpture (View)

  • Dying Slave sculpture (View)

  • The Pieta (View)

• Da Vinci

  • (Only completed 34 paintings)

  • Mona Lisa (View)

  • Last Supper (View)

  • Painted Salvatore Mundi (View)

  • Lost painting Battle of Anghiari (View)

• Raphael

  • School of Athens (View)

    • Many philosophers like Plato and Socrates, standing on steps

  • The Parnassus (View)

• Donatello

  • Equestrian Statue of Gattamelata (View)

  • Wooden statue of Mary Magdalene - Penitent Magdalene (View)

  • Bronze statue of David (View)

• Botticelli

  • The Birth of Venus (View)

    • Venus in a shell, flowers in air

  • La Primavera (View)

    • In an orange grove, Cupid above the Three Graces to the left

• Bruegel the Elder (Flemish)

  • Hunters in the Snow (View)

    • Hunters with dogs on a hill, skaters in distance

  • Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (View)

    • Inspired Audin’s Musee des Beaux Arts poem

  • Netherlandish Proverbs (View)

  • Peasant Wedding (View)

• Van Eyck

  • Arnolfini Wedding (View)

    • Pregnant woman in green dress, “Van Eyck was here” above the mirror
    • See Qwiz5’s article for more information

  • The Ghent Altarpiece (View)

    • Collaborated with his brother Hubert (who commissioned it)

  • Self portrait with a red turban (View)

• Titian

  • Venus of Urbino (View)

    • Nude woman on white sheet bed, woman in white dress looking in chest

  • Sacred and Profane love (View)

    • Bride and Venus on a sarcophagus that Cupid is going through

  • Bacchus and Ariadne (View)

    • Cheetah’s draw Bacchus’chariot as he leaps out to protect Ariadne; snakes

• Holbein the Younger

  • The Ambassadors (View)

    • Two men in front of a green curtain; distorted skull

    • George de Selve and Jean de Dinteville

  • Painted images of Christ’s body

Mannerism

Late renaissance period, defied the necessity of realism

• El Greco

  • View of Toledo (View)

  • The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (View)

    • Saints Steven and Augustine

Baroque

Relatively emotional over calm rationality from the Renaissance, also focused on shadow work and detail

• Caravaggio

  • The Calling of St. Matthew (View)

    • Light comes in from right onto St. Matthew surrounded by his 3 assistants

    • Jesus on the right points at Matthew

  • Judith Beheading Holofernes (View)

    • Holofernes is under a green blanket with matching red curtains and blood

  • Supper at Emmaus (View)

    • Criticized as an imperfect Bible scene

    • Jesus and three other men dining at a table, Jesus’ arm outstretched

  • Conversion of St. Paul (View)

    • Criticized as an imperfect Bible scene

    • Light coming down on Saul of Tarsus; horses

  • The Cardsharps (View)

  • (Known for mastery of chiaroscuro, the manipulation of light and shadow)

• Velazquez

  • The Surrender of Breda (View)

    • The results of a siege

  • Rokeby Venus (View)

    • Venus lounging nude while Cupid holds a mirror for her to see her face, Velazquez’only nude

  • Las Meninas (View)

    • Considered by some to be the best painting of all time

    • Shows Valezquez in the left next to a large canvas, subject is Infanta Margarita

    • A dwarf serves Infanta Margarita and a girl is stepping on a dog

• Bernini

  • The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (View)

    • Marble sculpture of an angel holding an arrow or spear over Teresa

  • Baldacchino altar

  • The Rape of Proserpina (View)

    • Sculpture depicting the god Pluto seizing Proserpina to bring her to the underworld

  • Fountain of the Four Rivers (View)

    • An actual fountain in rome depicting four rivers (one from each known continent) and four gods

• Rembrandt

  • The Night Watch (View)

    • Group of armed militiamen

    • Shooting company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq

    • Girl in white w/ dead chicken, blue and yellow flag

  • Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (View)

    • 7 men look to the book in bottom right while an eighth (Dr. Nicolaes Tulp) works on the patient (Aris Kindt)

• Rubens

  • (Known for fleshy nudes)

  • Descent from the Cross (View)

    • In the Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, Belgium

    • Shows Christ being brought down from the cross

  • Marie de Medici cycle

• Vermeer

  • Girl with a Pearl Earring (View)

    • Girl wearing a blue and yellow turban and a yellow shirt

  • The Milkmaid (View)

    • Maid wearing yellow and blue pours milk into a container; various breads on the table in front of her

  • View of Delft (View)

  • The Allegory of Faith (View) and The Art of Painting (View)

  • The Geographer (View) and The Astronomer (View)

Neoclassicism

Seeked to revitalize the Roman style of art and its themes

• Jacque-Louis David

  • Death of Marat (View)

    • Marat has a skin disease and must remain in a bathtub where he is shown assassinated

    • Marat is holding a letter after being killed by Charlotte Corday

  • Oath of the Horatii (View)

    • Three Horatii brothers saluting to their father before the fight with the Curiatii, one of whom is Publius

    • Women in the right crying such as Camilla

  • Intervention of the Sabine Women (View)

Rococo

Mainly French movement that focused on royalty and pretty landscapes, happy scenes.

• Fragonard

  • The Swing (View)

    • Girl in big pink dress on a big swing in the forest, one man smiling with ropes and another under the brush looking up her dress

    • Three stone angels

• Watteau

  • The Embarkation for Cythera (View)

  • Pierrot (View)

• Gainsborough

  • The Blue Boy (View)

    • Portrait of Jonathon Buttall in all blue, holding a whip

Romanticism

Based on extreme emotional scenes, prized the feeling of the art over the realism

• Delacroix

  • Liberty Leading the People (View)

    • Bare-chested lady with a french flag and a musket

    • Boy with two pistols and a bag

    • One dead man is wearing one blue sock and barefoot on the other, with no pants, but wearing a shirt

  • The Death of Sardanapalus (View)

    • Sardanapalus on his big bed with red covers watching many people dying

  • The Massacre at Chios (View)

  • (Long rivalry with Ingres)

• Goya

  • (Focused on political events)

  • Third of May, 1808 (View)

    • Man in white with his hands up, looking towards a firing squad, other people dead and crying

  • Saturn Devouring his Son (View)

    • Crazed man with gray hair biting off a child’s arm

  • A series of secret paintings known as Black Paintings, such as Saturn Devouring his Son

  • “Disasters of War” series

  • See Qwiz5’s article for more information

• Turner

  • Rain, Steam, and Speed - the Great Western Railway (View)

    • Shows a train approaching through thick clouds, set on Maidenhead bridge

    • Boat floating on the river in the bottom left

    • A rabbit can be seen running across the track

  • The Fighting Téméraire (View)

  • The Slave Ship (View)

• Géricault

  • (Over exaggerated political events)

  • The Raft of the Medusa (View)

    • Pile of dead bodies, man holding a red flag and man waving a white cloth

    • Depicts a scene of many dying on a raft from a voyage off the coast of Mauritania

    • See Qwiz5’s article for more information

  • The Charging Chasseur (View)

    • Napoleonic Cavalryman rearing his white horse

    • Gericault’s first painting

  • The 1821 Derby at Epsom (View)

  • (painted several asylum patients)

• Ingres

  • (Rivalry with Delacroix)

  • La Grande Odalisque (View)

    • Nude concubine on a bed with “two or three vertebrae too many”

  • The Apotheosis of Homer (View)

    • Homer being crowned by an angel

• Friedrich

  • Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (View)

Realism

focused on capturing the nitty-gritty of real life; common themes ar poverty, peasants, and city life

(a subsect of realism but in the context of romanticism was the Barbizon school, which was started by and led by Millet)

• Courbet

  • Burial at Ornans (View)

    • Funeral procession

  • The Stone Breakers (View)

    • Destroyed, shows men working on a railway

• Daumier

  • Third-Class Carriage (View)

  • (did political commentary works)

• Copley

  • Watson and the Shark (View)

    • 9 people in a row boat, one trying to spear the shark attacking a nude figure in the water, 2 are reaching out to catch that person

  • Portrait of Paul Revere (View)

    • Holding a tea kettle

  • A Boy with a Flying Squirrel (View)

    • Shows his cousin Henry Pelham (pink collar) with a flying squirrel on a gold chain

• Homer

  • Painted American country life, especially set in Prout’s Neck, Maine

  • Gulf Stream (View)

    • Black man on a stranded boat surrounded by sharks

  • Snap the Whip (View)

    • Excited group of barefoot boys running in a field in front of a red building

• Wyeth

  • Christina’s World (View)

    • Girl in pink crawling towards a barn, possibly with polio, or Charcot-Marie-Tooth

  • 240 paintings of Helga Testorf (View)

• Eakins

  • Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic) (View)

    • Doctor teaching his pupils, considered too ’real’at the time

  • The Swimming Hole (View)

    • 6 nude male bathers, including himself, and a dog at a lake with a rock

  • Max Sxhmitt in a Single Scull (View)

• Sargent

  • Portrait of Madame X (View)

    • Shows Virginie Gautreau in a black dress with her hand on a table looking away

    • Considered very scandalous at the time

  • Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (View)

    • Two children in white, surrounded by flowers, holding chinese lanterns

  • El Jaleo (View)

    • Spanish dancer with guitarists, two hanging on the wall

• Whistler

  • Arrangement in grey and black (Whistler’s Mother) (View)

    • Depiction of his mother in grey tones

  • Nocturne in Black and Gold: the Falling Rocket (View)

    • One of many abstract “nocturnes” that Whistler made

  • Sued the critic John Ruskin for libel

• Constable

  • The Hay Wain (View)

    • Cart being pulled across the River Stour

• Hogarth

  • A Rake’s Progress (View)

    • Series of 8 paintings of Tom Rakewell, he ends up in Bethlem Hospital in Bedlam

  • Marriage a la Mode (View)

    • 6 painting series satirizing upper class aristocracy

  • The Painter and his Pug (View)

    • Self portrait of himself in a picture atop some books next to a dog

• Millet

  • The Sower (View)

  • The Gleaners (View)

  • Founded the Barbizon school

Ashcan School

American artists who wanted to accurately portray city lif hardships, led by Robert Henri and associated with Edward Hopper

• Hopper

  • Nighthawks (View)

    • Depicts 3 customers and a server late at night in a diner, one of whom is modeled after his wife Jo and has red hair

  • Chop Suey (View)

    • A pair of women in a restaurant next to a window

  • Automat (View)

    • One woman alone at night in a diner

Hudson River School

American art movement focused on the Hudson river. Led by Thomas Cole and practiced by Asher Durand and George Bellows

• Cole

  • The Oxbow (View)

    • Depicts the Hudson River

  • The Course of Empire

    • Series of 5 paintings that represent time in America

    • The Savage State (View, The Arcadian or Pastoral State View), The Consummation of Empire (View, Destruction View, Desolation View)

• Durand

  • Kindred Spirits (View)

• Bellows

  • (less known for Hudson paintings like Cliff Dwellers (View))

  • Stag at Sharkey’s (View (Not Hudson River))

    • Shows boxing

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Wanted art to go back to before Raphael began painting, since his work was seen as perfect and anything less was slop

(This group founded the journal The Germ)

• Dante Gabriel Rossetti (brother of poet Christina Rossetti)

  • Beata Beatrix (View)

    • Red dove delivering a red flower to a redhead wearing green

• Millais

  • Christ in the House of his Parents (View)

    • John the baptist as a boy holding a bowl

  • Ophelia (View)

    • Based on the shakespeare scene

Art Nouveau

Diverse movement across many countries aimed at blurring the line between decorative arts and fine arts. I.e. using stained glass of concrete as a medium; used pretty materials and dynamic lines.

• Gustave Klimt

  • The Kiss (View)

    • Utilized gold leaf

  • Beethoven Frieze (View)

  • Several portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer

  • (notable member of the Vienna Secession movement)

Impressionism

Focused on the initial impression of light on an object. Name is from Monet’s Impression: Sunrise

• Monet

  • Impression: Sunrise (View)

    • Boat on lake, reflection of sun

  • Rouen Cathedral series (View)

    • Series, painted at different times of day

  • Houses of Parliament (View)

    • Series, painted at different times of day

  • (painted many water lilies around his garden in Giverny)

  • (also painted a lot of haystacks)

• Manet

  • Luncheon on the Grass (feat. Victorine Meurent) (View)

    • Two clothed men and a nude woman sitting on the grass, a partially nude woman in the lake behind them

    • Features Victorine Meurent

  • Olympia (also feat. Meurent) (View)

    • Victorine Meurent nude on a white bed, a black slave woman holding flowers, a black cat at the end of the bed

  • A Bar at the Folies Bergere (View)

    • Lots of alcohol next to a bowl of oranges, the legs of a trapeze artist in the top left

• Degas

  • L’Absinthe (View)(The Absinthe drinker)

    • Woman and man looking lonely drinking absinthe

    • Originally titled and often called Dans une cafe (in a cafe)

  • A Cotton Office in New Orleans (View)

    • The interior of a cotton office, a man at the center reads a newspaper

  • Painted a lot of horses and ballerinas

  • (unhappy about being considered an impressionist painter, and mocked impressionists for outdoor scenes)

• Renoir

  • Luncheon of the Boating Party (View)

    • Happy scene showing many people talking on a balcony over Seine, including Gustave Caillebotte and his future wife holding a dog

  • The Bathers (View)

    • Two nude women lying down in the foreground, three more in the background

  • “Actually liked art” -Gabe Forrest

• Cassatt

  • The Child’s Bath (View)

    • Woman in a striped outfit washing a child’s feet in a bowl of water

Pointillism

Subsect of impressionism that used small dots to make a full image

• Seurat

  • Painted on an enormous canvas A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (View)

    • Girl in white dress with lady in pink holding a red parasol stare at viewer, woman in foreground has a both a dog and a monkey on leashes, four men in white rowing a boat in the background
    • See Qwiz5’s article for more information

Post-Impressionism

Followed Impressionism and pre-dated Fauvism making a weird mix, worked off the concept of light but added arbitrary color and emphasis for emotional effect.

• Van Gogh

  • Starry Night (View)

    • Depicts Van Gogh’s view from an asylum in Arles

  • The Potato Eaters (View)

    • 5 people eating potatoes in a dark scene under one oil lamp

  • Portrait of Dr. Gachet (View)

  • The Night Cafe (View)

  • Bedroom at Arles (View)

    • Orange bed on the right wall

  • Painted a lot of sunflowers

• Cézanne

  • (Father of Post-Impressionism, inspired cubism)

  • The Large Bathers (View)

    • View of a lake between trees, with many nude figures in the foreground, and some in the lake and on the land beyond, forms a triangle

  • A Modern Olympia (View)

    • Homage to Manet’s Olympia, but modeled after Titian’s Venus of Urbino

  • Several paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire

• Gauguin

  • (Friend of Van Gogh)

  • (Moved to Tahiti in older age)

  • Yellow Christ (View)

    • Christ shown as yellow on a cross with 3 women around him, the grass is yellow and the trees are red, someone is climbing over a wall in the background

  • Where do we Come From? What are we? Where are we going? (View)

    • Meant to be read from right to left

• Toulouse-Lautrec

  • Created several posters

  • At the Moulin Rouge (View)

• Rousseau

  • Sleeping Gypsy (View)

    • Lion behind a sleeping black woman

  • The Dream (View)

  • (Didn’t start until his 50s)

Fauvism

Used color arbitrarily for effect, kaleidoscopic extreme

• Matisse

  • The Dance (View)

    • 5 nude red figures over blue and green background

  • Joy of Life (View)

    • Many nude men and women enjoying themselves, scene similar to The Dance in the background

  • Harmony in Red (View) (sometimes called the red room)

    • Red wall and red table, with blue vines and blue flowers on the cloth and wall

  • The Green Stripe (View)

    • Shows his wife with a green stripe down the middle of her face

  • Woman with a Hat (View)

    • Also of his wife

  • A book of paper cutouts called Jazz

• Derain

  • Two paintings of Charing Cross Bridge in a multi color pallette

Expressionism

Mostly German, based on extreme emotional experiences rather than literal images

• Munch

  • The Scream (View)

    • Man on a bridge with his hands on his head screaming, two people in the background on the bridge, background is the explosion of Krakatoa

  • Frieze of Life (View)

    • Collection of paintings, includes The Scream

  • Death in the sickroom (View)

    • Painting of his sister Sophie who died young of TB

  • Vampire (View)

    • Red haired woman sinks her teeth into a man’s neck

  • Puberty (View)

    • Shows Sophie nude on a bed, with a large shadow being cast

  • The Sick Child (View)

Cubism

Showing objects from numerous vantage points at once, breaking perspective, pre-dated by Cézanne

See Qwiz5’s article for more information

• Picasso

  • Guernica (View)

    • Horse crying out, lightbulb at top, bull w one eye, many things

  • Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (View)

    • Five prostitutes wearing african masks

  • Old Guitarist (View)

    • Very blue, shows a (dead?) man hunched over a guitar

  • Massacre in Korea (Views)

  • (went through a Blue period then a Rose period)

  • (painted 58 versions of Las Meninas)

• Chagall

  • I and the Village (View)

    • Depicts Chagall’s life, shows a large green face looking at a white horse, a woman milking a goat, man w a scythe talking to an upside down woman

  • White Crucifixion (View)

    • Jesus in the center on the cross w a beam of light on him, burning synagogue, boat full of people, Lithuanian flag, other things

  • Several stained glass works, and several portraits of his wife Bella

• Braque

  • (Co-founded Cubism w Picasso)

  • Houses at L’Estaque (View)

    • Vauxcelles criticized this work saying that Braque simplified it all to cubes, leading to the naming of Cubism

Other cubism info: synthetic and analytic phases, offshoots named purism and orphism, other artists include Metzinger and Gris, introduced collage

Futurism

Primarily Italian movement, worshiped speed, modernity, technology and violence > The manifesto was written by Marinetti, says: “a race-automobile which seems to rush over exploding powder is more beautiful than the ‘Victory of Samothrace’”

• Boccioni (leader of group)

  • The City Rises (View)

  • Dynamism of a cyclist (View)

  • Sculpted Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (View)

    • Cool looking gold one

• Carra

  • Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (View)

• Balla

  • Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (View)

    • Shows a Dachshund’s legs in many positions at once

Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”)

German movement, abstract, let by Kandinsky

• Kandinsky

  • First fully recognized art pieces, called “Compositions”

  • Wrote treatises “Point and Line to Plane” and “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”

  • Der Blaue Reiter painting (View)

    • White horse in a green grassy field, rider has a blue cloak on

• Marc

  • Fate of the Animals (View)

    • Was later burned, then restored by Klee

• Klee

  • Mostly abstract

  • Twittering Machine (View)

Die Brücke (“The Bridge”)

Less abstract than der blaue reiter but forms are distorted for emotion realism, sought to connect the old and the new via the bridge

• Led by Kirchner and Nolde

• Labeled “degenerate art” be Nazis

Constructivism

Russian art movement led by Tagline which sought to reject autonomy in art and “construct” it for social purposes only, also a major architectural style that influenced the Bauhaus school

Suprematism

Russian as well, saw art as a “supremacy of pure artistic feeling,” rather than being restrained by objects or form

• Malevich

  • Black Square (View)

    • Literally a black square on a white canvas

  • White on White (View)

    • Slightly rotated white square on an off-white background

Constructivism believed that art was made for social purposes while suprematism believed it was made purely for itself

Regionalism

Realistic scenes of rural and small-town america, especially in the midwest

• Wood

  • American Gothic (View)

    • Old man with a pitchfork looking at the viewer, woman is looking just off, white house and red barn in the background

  • Parson Weems’ Fable (View)

    • Shows Weems holding a red curtain to show a scene of Washington chopping a cherry tree

  • The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (View)

  • Daughters of Revolution (View)

    • 3 old women, one holding a teacup, a recreation of Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware on the back wall

• Benton

Other artists

Not easily put into a category

• Rodin

  • Gates of Hell (View)

    • Features smaller versions of his other works

    • Bronze doors w 200+ small figures on them

  • The Thinker (View)

    • A man sitting on a rock, leaned over on his arm, in deep thought

  • The Kiss (View)

    • Shows love between Paolo and Francesca

  • The Burghers of Calais (View)

    • Group of 6 Calais citizens in despair

  • The Age of Bronze (View)

    • Man running his hands through his hair

• Bosch

  • The Garden of Earthly Delights (View)

    • Massive triptych, Jesus is shown with Adam and Eve in the left panel

  • (forerunner to surrealism)

• O’Keefe

  • Radiator Building: Night, New York (View)

    • NYC skyscraper at night

  • (painted lots of skulls and flowers)

  • (wife of Alfred Stieglitz)

• Hokusai

  • Great Wave off Kanagawa (View)

    • One of the 36

  • Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (View)

    • 36 woodprints

• Durer

  • Melancolia I (View)

    • Made on wood

  • Rhinoceros (View)

    • Also made on wood

• Calder

  • Lobster Trap and Fish Tail (View)

    • A “mobile”

  • Cirque Calder (View

    • Made of wire, cloth, and other household items

  • Flamingo (View)

    • Uses Calder Red, is located in Chicago, IL

  • (created first “mobiles”)

• Kahlo

  • Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (View)

    • Also has a monkey and a panther(?), butterflies on her head

  • The Broken Column (View)

    • Shows Kahlo nude above the waist with many nails in her skin, and a shattered column through her exposed midsection, after a bus accident

  • (painted many self-portraits)

  • (had a unibrow, which she painted often)

  • (wife of Diego Rivera)

• Rivera

  • Man at the Crossroads (View)

    • Fresco in Rockefeller Center, NYC, controversial for showing Lenin

  • Detroit Industry Murals (View)

    • Series of frescoes at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Detroit, MI

  • (Frieda Kahlo’s husband)

  • (Mexican muralist)

• Rockwell

  • Freedom From Want (View)

    • Shows a group about to eat a thanksgiving dinner

    • Part of his “Four Freedoms” series

  • The Problem we all Live With (View)

    • 4 marshals escorting Ruby Bridges, a young black girl, with racial slurs on the wall behind

  • (painted for the Saturday Evening Post)

• West

  • The Death of General Wolfe (View)

    • General Wolfe dies in the middle of a battlefield, a tattooed native american sits in a (thinker-esque) hunched pose (on a tomahawk) looking at him

De Stijl

Abstract Dutch movement based on geometric forms; everything can be reduced to colors and lines

• Mondrian

  • Broadway Boogie Woogie (View)

    • Uses colors red, yellow, and blue (on white background)

  • Victory Boogie Woogie (View)

    • Sequel to broadway boogie woogie

  • (turned paintings sideways in his “lozenge” paintings)

  • (Yves Saint-Laurent created a clothing line based on his work)

• Van Doesburg

  • Founder of De Stijl

• Rietveld

  • Red and Blue Chair (View)

    • Chair made in De Stijl style

  • Schroder House (View)

    • Only piece of De Stijl architecture

Surrealism

Wanted to explore the unconscious mind through self induced psychosis and dream states, also automatic writing, manifesto by Andre Breton

• Dali

  • The Persistence of Memory (View)

    • 3 clocks shown limp, one draped over a branch, ants on the stopwatch in bottom left, cliffs in the background are the coast of Catalonia

  • The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (View)

    • Landscape flooded with water, ground replaced with blocks floating, cliffs now float above the water

  • Hallucinogenic Toreador (View)

  • Metamorphosis of Narcissus (View)

    • Hand coming from the earth holding an egg, flower coming from a crack in the egg

  • Lobster Telephone (View)

    • A surrealist object

• Magritte

  • The Son of Man (View)

    • Man in a suit and bowler hat with a green apple in front of his face

  • Time Transfixed (View)

    • Train coming out of a fireplace, clock on top

  • The Treachery of Images (View)

    • Painting of a pipe with the caption “this is not a pipe” (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”)

  • Not to be Reproduced (View)

    • Shows a man in front of a mirror which reflects the back of his head, but a book is reflected correctly

  • See Qwiz5’s article for more information

• Ernst

  • Discovered frottage

    • “Automatic” method

• Oppenheim

  • Breakfast in Fur (View)

Dada

Anti-art movement that loved randomness

• Duchamp

  • Fountain (View)

    • One of his “ready-made” sculptures, it is a urinal signed R. Mutt

  • The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) (View)

    • Depicts a bride in the upper panel and her 9 bachelors in the lower panel

  • L.H.O.O.Q. (View)

    • Mona Lisa with a mustache

  • Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2

    • Cubist painting

  • (alter ego called Rose Selavy)

• Ray

  • Duchamp in Drag (View)

    • A photograph of Duchamp as his alter ego Rose Selavy

  • Object to be Destroyed (View)

    • Metronome with a photograph of an eye on its swinging arm

  • (Made photograms by putting objects on photosensitive paper)

Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Art

Diverse movement applied to abstract art

Two branches: gestural and color field. Gestural is spontaneous and dynamic, color field art is focused on color relationships and large blocks of color

• Pollock

  • Lavender Mist (number 1, 1950) (View)

  • Blue Poles (number 11, 1952) (View)

  • Full Fathom Five (View)

  • Number 5, 1948 (View)

    • Sold for $140 mil, the highest price for a painting at the time (2006)

  • (many paintings in the format “number x, [year]”

  • (husband of Lee Krasner)

  • (used an “action painting” technique which was videoed by Hans Namuth)

  • (known as “Jack the Dripper”)

• De Kooning

  • Woman (View)

    • Series with abstract female forms

  • Wife Elaine

• Rothko

  • (main color field painter)

  • (painted 14 dark paintings at his namesake chapel in Houston, TX)

Other artists: Franz Kline, Josef Albers, Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still

Pop Art

60s movement based around pop culture and advertisement

• Rauschenberg (proto-pop)

  • Monogram (View)

    • A goat in a tire

  • (created many “combines”)

• Johns (proto-pop)

  • (used encaustics to create images of the American flag)

• Warhol

  • 32 Campbell’s Soup cans (View)

  • Marylin Monroe silkscreens

  • Death and Disaster

    • Series that depicts car crashes

  • (mass produced artworks in his “factory”)

  • (nearly killed by Valerie Solanas)

• Lichtenstein

  • Whaam! (View)

    • “I pressed the fire control…and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky…” shows one plane shooting another with a rocket

  • Drowning Girl (View)

    • Thought bubble that says “I don’t care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help”

  • (painted several scenes from comic books, and used Ben-day dots to amplify effects)

• Oldenburg

  • Created large “soft” sculptures of everyday foods and objects like toilets or hamburgers

• Hockney

  • A Bigger Splash (View)

    • Shows a pool with a diving board

Op Art

Based on optical illusion, creates motion by placing lines and objects close together

Minimalism

Reduces work to its absolute basic components and the space around it

Conceptual Art

More about the concept it embodies then the actual art

• Kosuth

  • One and Three Chairs (View)

Contemporary Art

Generally post-modern with a nice amount of conceptual works

Architects

• Sullivan

  • Wainwright Building

    • One of the first skyscrapers, utilized the “form follows function” motto, located in downtown St. Louis

    • A collaboration with Dankmar Adler

  • Chicago Stock Exchange Building

    • Installed outside the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Stock Exchange Arch is one of few remaining fragments

  • (worked with Dankmar Adler)

  • (Frank Lloyd Wright’s mentor)

  • (“form follows function”

• Wright

  • Fallingwater

    • House designed for Edgar Kaufman, uses cantilevered floors to stretch across Bear Run Creek

  • Taliesin West

    • Wright’s winter home in Scottsdale, AZ

  • (described “usonian” homes and city design)

    • Usonian homes are L-shaped, and Wright coined the term “carport”

  • See Qwiz5’s article for more information

• Mies van der Rohe

  • Seagram building

    • Collaboration with Philip Johnson, located in Manhattan, NYC, built in an International Style

  • (known for his maxim “less is more”

• Pei

  • The Louvre Pyramid

    • Glass pyramid serving as the entrance to the Louvre

  • JFK Presidential Library

    • Located in Boston, MA

  • Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

    • Located in Cleveland, OH

  • (died in 2019)

  • See Qwiz5’s article for more information

• Wren

  • St. Paul’s Cathedral

    • Located on Ludgate Hill

    • One of 50+ churches Wren rebuilt after the Great Fire in 1666

  • The Royal Observatory at Greenwich

  • (“if you seek his memorial, look around you” inscribed on his tombstone)

• Saarinen

  • Gateway Arch

    • Located in St. Louis, one example of a catenary curve, which he is famous for

  • Dulles Washington Airport

    • Uses concrete catenary roof

  • TWA Flight Center in JFK International Airport

    • Again, he designed the curves

  • MIT Chapel

  • Kresge Auditorium

    • Located at MIT

• Le Corbusier

  • Villa Savoye

    • Modernist villa in Poissy, on the outskirts of Paris

  • Open Hand Monument

    • Located in Chandigarh, India, symbolizes peace and reconciliation

  • (wrote the book Towards a New Architecture)

    • References his “five points,”which Villa Savoye is an example of

• Brunelleschi

  • The dome of the Florence Cathedral

    • Out of bricks

  • Dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral

  • (lost a competition to design bronze doors for the Florence baptistery to Ghiberti

• Gaudi****

  • Sagrada Familia

    • Unfinished

Other Sculptors

• Remington

  • The Bronco Buster

    • First Remington sculpture, shows a cowboy on a bronco

  • The Rattlesnake

    • Very similar to The Bronco Buster, the horse is afraid of a rattlesnake

  • Shotgun Hospitality

    • Painting of a cowboy and 3 native americans gathered around a campfire and a cart preparing to trade

• Borglum

  • Mt. Rushmore

    • Depicts in order: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln

    • Made with dynamite into a mountain in SD

• Praxiteles

  • Hermes Carrying the Infant Dionysus

  • The Aberdeen Head

• Cellini

  • Perseus with the Head of Medusa

    • Perseus stands nude on top of Medusa’s body holding her head, sword in his right hand

  • Francis I’s Salt Cellar

  • Nymph de Fontainebleau

• Brancusi

  • Bird in Space

    • Part of a series of 7 sculptures

  • The Endless Column

    • 98 foot-high column of zinc, brass-clad, cast iron modules threaded onto a steel spine

    • Part of a 3-work monument ensemble including Table of Silence and Gate of the Kiss

  • Table of Silence

    • Large circular stone table surrounded by 12 hourglass seats

  • Sleeping Muse

    • Bronze cast of a sleeping female head

  • See Qwiz5’s article for more information

Photographers

• Adams

  • Moon over Half Dome

    • Shows the moon and Half Dome, a granite Yosemite crest

  • Photographs of Manzanar

    • Documented Japanese-American internment, Lange also did this

  • (many photos at Yosemite)

  • (founder of the group f/64, read “f stop 64”

• Lange

  • Migrant Mother

    • Florence Owens Thompson looking anxious as her two children bury their faces, they are fleeing the dust bowl

  • Photographs at Manzanar

    • Documented Japanese-American internment, Adams also did this

  • The White Angel Breadline

    • Showcases the great depression, a group of men in hats stand beside a fence, one leans over it with an empty cup