Arts

• Byzantine art


  • Very strong linear emphasis
  • Use of rigid artistic stereotypes
  • Colors ranging from light to dark
  • Artists were famous in manuscript and icon painting
• Figures in Byzantine art


  • Portrayed in stylized postures
  • Serene of expression
  • Often halo-crowned
  • Shunning three-dimensional depth in favor of a single plane
  • Robes drawn with complex folds
• Icon painting


  Panel painting of one or more holy figures, popularized during the byzantine period
• The Early Christians continued the old Roman tradition. Early Christian churches were modeled in Roman basilicas with the use of old columns. These were brought in uniform height.
• Romanesque style


  • Deliberate articulation of structure, in which each construction part played a designed role in establishing equilibrium
  • Adapted to meet the needs of Feudal Europe, with strong structures to withstand attacks
  • Marked by crude, powerful stonework and heavy walls, projecting a fortress-like impression
  • Characterized by very heavy walls with small window openings, stone arches or inverted roof windows
  • Sober and dignified general characteristic
• Gothic Architectural style was developed inFrance between 12th to 16th centuries. It wasadopted in religious buildings. It was also referred to as Christian church architecture. It has been referred as such because the decorations were more elaborate and sculpture forms the decoration on the three postal which were heavy with religious depictions and relics.

  This style used the ribbed vault, flying buttresses, pointed arches, and steep roofs. There was an emphasis on the vertical, with galleries and arcades replacing internal walls and extensive use of glass.

  
• Donatello made St. George, the first statue since ancient times that can stand by itself; classical contrapposto(in which the standing human figure is poised such that the weight rests on one leg, freeing the other leg, which is bent at the knee.).

  In high Renaissance, a well-known name in sculpture was Michelangelo. He further added that the David is “the earliest monumental statue of the High Renaissance”

  
• Greek and Roman styles influenced the Renaissance architecture. It was basically the adaptation of the classical order and design. Renaissance architecture was brought to the construction of aristocratic residences or palazzos, and churches.

  Though dome is not considered Renaissance work, it can be seen in early Renaissance architectures. The founder and leader of High Renaissance architecture was Donato Bramante who designed the St. Peter’s Basilica. Palazzo Farnese is said to be the greatest Renaissance palace.

  
• The “anti-classical” phase of Mannerism has no sculptural counterpart, but the second elegant phase of Mannerism appears in countless sculptural examples in Italy and abroad.

  During the period of mannerism, “the best-known representative of the style is Benvenuto Cellini.

  Cellini's only major work in precious metal to escape destruction, displays the virtues and limitations of his art.

  
• Rubenistes painting


  • A Pilgrimage to Cythera
• Neoclassicism is a new revival of classical antiquity, more consistent than earlier classicisms, and one that was linked, at least initially, to Enlightenment thought”. In France, the thinkers of the Enlightenment, , strongly fostered the anti-Rococo trend in painting. This reform, at first a matter of content rather than style accounts for the sudden fame around 1760 of Jean-Baptiste Greuze.

  
• The development of Romantic sculpture follows the pattern of painting. The rebellious and individualistic urges of Romanticism could find expression in rough, small-scale sketches.

  One of the sculptors during this time was Francois Rude who produced the splendidly rhetorical La Marseillaise on the Arc de Triomphe. It depicted the soldiers and volunteers rallying to defend the Republic, are still in classical guise but the Genius of Liberty above them imparts her great forward-rushing movement to the entire group, lending it an irresistible Romantic sweep.
• Expressionism, on the other hand, originated in Germany. It was the ‘use of violent colors to express violent emotional content’. What characterized expressionists painting were fear, loneliness, poverty, and suffering. The painting ‘Scream’ of Edward Munich, for example, showed ‘isolation, pain, fear and emotional pressure’.

  
• Futurists


  Called for artists to have an emotional involvement in the dynamics of modern life. Wanted to depict visually the perception of movement, speed, and change.
• Futurist painting techniques


  • Used fragmented and intersecting plane surfaces and outlines to show several simultaneous views of an object
  • Sought to portray the object's movement, so their works typically include rhythmic spatial repetitions of an object's outlines during transit
• Important futurist art

  • The City Rises by Umberto Boccioni
• Abstract art


  Art that does not depict reality accurately
• Non-objective art


  Art that has no resemblance to its real-world counterpart
• When all resemblance to the original referent disappears, the word "abstract" no longer suffices and a different word must be used: "non-objective"
• Dadaism, Surrrealism, Constructivism, De Stijl, Abstract Expressionism, Optical Art, Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art may be categorized under abstract art or non-objective art.
• The fewer the similarities that the image has to its real-world counterpart, then the higher its degree of abstraction (Picasso’s Guernica). When the artist pushes abstraction further and further, a point is reached wherein all resemblance to the original referent disappears and we are left with a shape that seems to resemble nothing. At this point, the word "abstract" no longer suffices and a different word must be used: "non-objective".”

  
• Dadaism ran contrary to the ‘laws of beauty and social organization’ for it was based on deliberate irrationality, anarchy, and cynicism. Kurt Schwitters’ Merz Barn manifested negation of the laws of beauty.

  
• Surrealism ‘linked symbols between the conscious and unconscious mind’. It ‘explored the subconscious’ trying to ‘search hidden motives’ and it tended to ‘analyze the suppressed desires, irrational acts, and dreams’. Surrealism was defined as beneath the real. Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘The Damned Hell in Garden of Delights’.

  
• Constructivism abolished the traditional artistic concern with composition and replaced it with construction. Created objects were to carry out a fundamental analysis of the materials and forms of art, one which might lead to the design of functional objects. A prominent constructivist was Valdimir Tatlin who created the Monument to Third International.

  
• De Stijl is an art movement which started in the Netherlands and it espoused a visual language which consisted of “precisely rendered geometric shapes like straight lines, squares, and rectangles, and the use of primary colors”. De Stijl artists sought laws of equilibrium and harmony applicable to art and life as a response to the horrors of war. Piet Mondrian is a prominent de stijl artist who made the Composition A.

  
• Abstract expressionism is an art movement that filled the canvasses with fields of color and abstract forms and abstract expressionists attacked their canvasses with vigorous gestural expressionism. They underscore ‘free, spontaneous, and personal expression, and they exercise considerable freedom of technique and execution to attain this goal, with a particular emphasis laid on the exploitation of the variables’ physical character of paint to evoke expressive qualities’. Jackson Pollock’s Number 1 shows the features and characteristics of abstract expressionism.

  
• Optical art is popularly known as “op art”. It “relied on creating an illusion to inform the experience of the artwork using color, pattern, and other perspective tricks that artists had on their sleeves”. It deals with optical illusion, which is “achieved through the systematic and precise manipulation of shapes and colors” wherein “the effects are based on perspective illusion or on chromatic tension and surface tension”. An example of this is Bridget Riley’s Blaze.

  
• Pop Art “celebrated commonplace objects and people of everyday life, in this way seeking to elevate popular culture to the level of fine art”. Pop art is: popular (designed for a mass audience), transient (short-term solution), expendable (easily forgotten), low cost, mass produced, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business”. Campbell’s Soup Cans by Andy Warhol is an example of pop art.

  
• Minimalism was “seen as an extreme type of abstraction that favored geometric shapes, color fields and the use of objects and materials that had an “industrial” sense”. They “created works that resembled factory-built commodities and upended traditional definitions of art whose meaning was tied to a narrative or to the artist”. Tony Smith’s Die is an example of minimalism.

  
• Conceptual art “makes use of an ‘environmental object’ or an ‘environmental composition’. The objects could be styrofoam pieces shaped and painted to resemble such objects as loaves of bread and arranged in interesting patterns on the floor or wall of a gallery”. Conceptual artists are influenced by minimalism but they “reduced the material presence of the work to an absolute minimum – a tendency that some have referred to as the “dematerialization” of art”. Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs

  
• Photorealism is also known as hyperrealism or superrealism. It “complicates the notion of realism by successfully mixing together that which is real with that which is unreal. While the image on the canvas is recognizable and carefully delineated to suggest that it is accurate, the artist often based their work upon photographs rather than direct observation. McDonalds Pickup by Ralph Goings.

  
• Installation art, which is a form of conceptual art, “involves the configuration of objects in a space”. It “allows the viewer to enter and move around the configured space and/or interact with some of its elements”. It “may engage several of the viewer’s senses including touch, sound and smell, as well as vision”. Etant donnes by Marcel Duchamp is an example of installation art.

  
• Performance art is presented “live”. It is “performed” by artists who became “discontented with the conventional forms of art” and they “have often turned to performance as a means to rejuvenate their work”. It is particularly focused on the body which is why it is often referred to as body art. Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece was performed in 1964 which invited audience to participate in an “unveiling of the female body”

  
• The medieval era, often called The Middle Ages or the Dark Ages, began around 476 A.D. following a great loss of power throughout Europe by the Roman Emperor. The Middle Ages span roughly 1,000 years, ending between 1400 and 1450.
• Architecture of the Medieval Period

  Conveyed a sense of heaviness, with thick walls and few windows, recalling their dual roles as places of worship and defensive fortifications.
• Eras of Medieval period

  I. EARLY CHRISTIAN

  Continued the Roman tradition

  II. BYZANTINE

  Characterized by a great dome supported by curved triangles called pendentive and fitted to a square arch.

  III. ROMANESQUE

  Architectural style of Western Christianity
• GOTHIC PERIOD

  A Combination of the religious and the grotesque’. Germanic influence developed at a rather slow pace in its early stages (Janson, 1995).
• Architecture of the Gothic Period

  Many stained glass windows and thinner walls, grew to staggering heights
• Sculpture of the Gothic period

  From stiff, simple, hieratic forms toward more relaxed and natural ones.
• Paintings of the Gothic Period

  Renderings of figures like Christ and the saints, down tactile aspects, focus on facial expression and body position, vivid color, and gold accents