Extra, Extra, Read All About It: 1. 1630 David and Goliath painting

discovered to be by Artemesia Gentileschi

Two other famous paintings

2. Papers about her #Me2 episode now fully reviewed

The trial concerning her rape gets her tortured by thumbscrews, but she still won’t renege.

Finally her rapist (her painting teacher) is convicted but it let off scot-free on his own recognizance .

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of University College, Washington University

Spring 2020Stan Misler

<misler@wustl.edu>

History of Western Visual Arts: Perspectives through contemporary culture

8. Late 19th Century: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

Emancipation of color & light; centered in Paris

A. Manet’s Iconoclasm: Violating Perspective & Logical Consistency

1. Luncheon on the GrassConsidered Uninterpretable:

No story or allusion to myth Considered Immoral: Undressed woman with two well dressed gentsNo personal interactions Violation of perspective: foreground, background but no middle ground; bather too tall for perspectiveSunlight from two directions

Other paintings of same period eliminate horizontal line and curve objects that should be straight (trees)

2. A Bar at Folie-Bergere; Olympia

Two images at two different angles and in one as if in time-lapse: Server looking straight out at us + as seen further to the left in mirror talking to a customerLight sources suspended in air

What might be more improper than the scene of a prostitute attended by a black maid?

Scandal of 1863

B. Birth of Impressionism in Art1. By 1870, portable camera and “snapshot” eliminated need for portraiture or pictures as documentation. However, painters need work. 2. Impressionists began as Realists with interest in natural colors and landscapes: “Go into nature and paint it as it is”. Painting in open air -> close observation and abandonment of imagination, mythology and history. With attempts to capture a fleeting moment, they began operating at boundary of what is seen vs what is felt i.e., at the level of “impressions”2. Paintings with qualities of sketches: abbreviation of detail and done with speed and spontaneity in many colors and with short, choppy brushstrokes. Canvases often unintelligible at short range; need viewing at distance so brain fuses strokes 3. Painters came to realize that incident light, reflections from other objects, and atmospheric changes over the day, all had strong effect on the “color” of objects painted. Working on several canvases at once, they returned to each daily as patterns of light returned.4. Showing emotional essence of object rather than external appearance. 5. Not uniform style but all have highly colored, light filled scenes. 6. Major artists: Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Rodin & Cassatt

6. Inspiration = Impressionist Poetry

Baudeliare: Evening HarmoniesThe hour has come at last when, trembling to and fro,Each flower is a censer sifting its perfume;The scent and sounds all swirl in evening’s gentle fume;A melancholy waltz, a languid vertigo!

Each flower is a censer sifting its perfume;A violin’s vibrato wounds the heart of woe;A melancholy waltz, a languid vertigo!The sky, a lofty altar, lovely in the gloom,

A violin’s vibrato wounds the heart of woe,A tender heart detests the black of nullity,The sky, a lofty altar, lovely in the gloom;The sun is drowning in the evening’s blood-red glow.

A tender heart detests the black of nullity,And lovingly preserves each trace of long ago!The sun is drowning in the evening’s blood-red glow …Your memory shines through me like an ostensory!

1. Out of door Impression: Sunlight Effects “Instantaneity”: time as a snapshot

Monet, Sunrise Le Harve; St Lazare Train Station Waterloo Bridge

Sunlight Effects: Rouen Cathedral & Waterloo Bridge blurring of object boundaries; color more important that

shape; painting without outline on canvas

2. In-Door Impressionisma. Degas: voyeur, painting dancers, café singers,

prostitutes and bathers, and relationships between couples

Fascination with patterns and motion of ballet. Painted students at Paris Opera's ballet large empty space near bottom of canvas that creates the illusion of a continuous floor while diagonal of flooring pulls the viewer into the space. Figures are not centered—creates a spontaneous feeling of a moment captured. Often painted from newly taken photos

Uses pigmented beeswax, clay, metal armature, rope, paintbrushes, human hair, silk and linen ribbon, cotton and silk tutu, linen slippers, on wooden base; most in sharp contrast with classical materials; smaller than life.Shows devotion, commitment, hope, physical trials needed to be a dancer

Little Dancer Aged Fourteen; 1878–1881;

3. Impressionism both in and out of doorsa. Mary Cassatt: Susan comforting Baby &

The bath

Cassatt depicts women and children and their

tender relationships, with “objectivity and

genuine sentiment”

The printed wall paper, tiled flooring, &

striped dress strongly influenced by

contemporary Japanese wood-block prints

b. Renoir: Nudes and Strolls in Paris

4. Sculpture: Rodin, The Thinker & Burghers of Calais

“possessed a unique ability to model the human body with naturalism, and celebrate individual physical features he believe reflected character.

Burghers of Calais were citizens who in the Hundred Year’s War offered to die so that their city might be spared. They were spared at the last moment.

The Thinker, one of a collection 169 figures at the Gates of Hell, is imagined to be looking down into Hell with great emotional tension. His gestalt is thought to reflect

features of Dante, the Biblical Adam and the mythological Prometheus.

Gates of Hell with Thinker

C. Post-Impressionist Art

Uses Impressionisms bright colors but new focuses on meaning (primitive, mystical or scientific)

Leading artists: Seurat, Cezanne, Matisse, Gauguin

1. Seurat: Pointilism done with calmness, monumentality, precision (every spot in place)Immersion in optics, psychology of vision and color contrast

-> use of dotted strokes to be blended by eye to make painting luminous and natural; complementary colors

Influenced by emerging science of

color and color perception: optical

mixing ; contrast perception by

fatigued visual system

Pointillism—using colors in a

controlled and calculated manner to

describe forms with many dots of

pure color (think of pixels)

rigidly placed rounded figures

Repeated motifs of woman with

umbrella, shadows of trees,

reclining figures pull the viewer

back into the painting's space

2. Gauguin: Terrorizing girls of Tahiti by “raising” ancestral spirits of the dead

3. Pissaro: photographic view from above (high angles) vs. conventional eye-level view

Place of French Theater

4. Van Gogh: prototypic tormented genius depicting madness and violence of nature;

dreaming through art: bridge between impressionism and expressionism; impetuous brush strokes and distortion of colors and

objects prefigure Expressionism

Starry night; Self-portrait; Irises

“Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have in front of

my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily to express myself forcibly…[to suggest] some

emotion of ardent temperament.”

Is this a disturbed face? Painted in asylum

Depicts vastness of the universe with

swirling sky and glowing stars;

humanity tiny in comparison to the

universe

Deep blues, dark earth tones likely

express quiet and pervasive depression

Paintings show sunflowersin all stages of life;

Innovative for the use of yellows

Mutilated ear after the famous fight with Gauguin in Arles; delivered ear to prostitute. Episode ended van Gogh / Gauguin collaboration

Very early painting Van Gogh Realism's subject matter (poverty, harshness of life)Dark color, bony hands, weathered table/walls, intensity of lit faces add to the overall dark mood/feeling of poverty

The Potato EatersSunflowers on Blue,

Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, 1889,

5. CezanneConsidered bridge between Impressionism and the early Cubism, he used planes of

color and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields. He simplified naturally occurring forms to their geometric essentials and wanted to "treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone" (e.g., a tree trunk as a cylinder, and an

apple or orange a sphere). Matisse & Picasso remarked “Cézanne is father of us all".Additionally, Cézanne's desire to capture the truth of perception led him to

explore binocular vision graphically, to provide the viewer with an aesthetic experience of depth different from those of earlier ideals of perspective

6. Toulouse – Lautrec, At Moulin Rouge

The Dream

7. Rousseau: “Precursor of modern arts”

Child-like depiction

D. Mid-Late 19th Century ArchitectureRoebling’s Brooklyn Bridge

(suspension)

Sullivan’s Wainwright Bldg, STLBirth of skyscraper

Eiffel Tower, Paris

E. Late 19th Century Photography1. Steichen, Rodin and Sculpture

2. Coburn : Portrait of Ezra PoundMultiple Exposures

F. Musical Impressionism Debussy: Prelude to Afternoon of Faun (1894)

Musical response to the poem of Stephane Mallarmé (1842–1898), in which a faun, playing with his pan-pipes (and himself?) in the woods, becomes aroused by passing nymphs and naiads, pursues them unsuccessfully, then wearily abandons himself to a sleep filled with visions.Work first seems improvisational (free-form); however, with closer listening consists of a complex organization of motifs traded between members of the orchestra.

Those nymphs I want to perpetuate them

So bright, their light rosy flesh, that it hovers in the air

Drowsy with tangled slumbers, Did I love a dream?

My doubt, hoard of ancient night, is crowned

In a many a subtle branch, which, remaining the true

Woods themselves, proves, alas! that alone I offered

Myself as a triumph the perfect sin of roses.

Let us reflect ...

or if the women you describe

Represent a desire of your fabulous senses!

Faun, the illusion flows from the cold blue eyes

Of the most chaste like a spring of tears:

But the other, all sighs, do you say she contrasts

Like the warm day's breeze in your fleece?

But no! through the still and weary rapture

Stifling the cool morning with heat should it struggle,

No water murmurs unless poured by my flute

On the thicket sprinkled with melody; and the

Only wind, quick to escape the twin pipes before

Scattering the sound in an arid rain, is,

On the smooth untroubled surface of the horizon,

The visible and serene artificial breath

Of inspiration returning to the sky.

Revolutionary Features1. Inspired by Javanese gamelan using pentatonic

scale + lightness of Japanese style2. Abandonment of (a) traditional tonality, (now

featuring overhanging tones as in bell–ringing); (b) structural architecture; and © complex development

3. New rhythmic complexity4. Emphasis on tonal color (pure sound)5. Lightness of touch, elegance and

understatement; emphasis on the ephemeral and subtle without melodrama

G. Science at end of 19th centurya. The birth of modern medicine1. Making surgery safe and widely applicable especially for use on

internal organs; for cancer removal (particularly breast); for exploration

of gunshot wound to abdomen

i. Anesthesia = relax muscles and promote unconsciousness

(chloroform);

ii. Antisepsis and Asepsis (Lister): To prevent infection need to (a)

sanitize wounds (spray )with carbolic acid, (b) wash hands with carbolic

acid, (c) use face masks, gloves and sterile instruments

iii. Suturing: discovery that cat gut sutures dissolve & are absorbed

iv. Halstead: Gentle, with moment to moment control of bleeding;

careful handling of tissue; dissections along tissue plains.

v. Open heart surgery: made possible by heart-lung bypass

vi. Microsurgery; keyhole / robotic surgery (minimally invasive)

vii. pinpoint “surgery” by focused laser (particularly to retina)

2. Microbiology and Immunology: Pasteur, Koch and discovery of

“bugs” (bacteria, viruses, parasites) as infectious agents and not

spontaneous generation.

Discovery of body’s Immune response: white blood cells attack, ingest

and destroy bacteria (Metchnikoff) vs. humoral response: serum from

exposed hosts contains antibodies neutralizing bacterial antigens, toxins

3. Cell Theory of Disease (Virchow):

“The basis of disease is in the cell, the basic unit of life. Once the cell is

understood, the cell’s alteration in disease can be studied and targeted for

treatment. Alteration in cell structure provides clues to alteration of

function.”

4. Pharmacology (drug therapy)

a. Antibiotics against bacteria

b. Drugs against pain / fever : NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-

inflammatory agents (including aspirin) reduce fever, inflammation and

pain of infection; narcotic analgesics (opiates) for severe post-op pain;

c. Chemotherapy: selective toxicity on rapidly dividing cancer

b. Working out complexity of Newtonian physics, light and electricity with some suggestion that Newton was too simple

c. Chemistry: concept of chemical reaction; periodic table; start of intensive

experiments with carbon compounds (organic chemistry)

a. Fuel and industrial revolution: from wood harvesting -> exploitation of earth’s limited stock of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) as power for lighting, heating, cooking, mechanized agriculture, construction and travelb. Human labor -> machinesc. Diverse and changing effects on environment

1. Farming (a) exaggerates problems with fresh drinking water and sanitation; (b) exposes humans to diseases originating with domesticated animals (smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, influenza; (c) degrades nutrition -> deficiency diseases (Fe, thiamine, Vit C)

2. World-wide exploration and conquest spreads diseases to populations without “herd” immunity (e.g., smallpox to natives and syphilis to Europeans?)

3. Modern risk factors for chronic disease: poverty, unfit drinking water, poor sanitation, malnutrition, pollution with man-made chemicals (carcinogens, teratogens, neurotoxins, allergens, and endocrine disruptors)

4. Development of modern diseases of affluence and diet: diabetes, obesity, hypertension, coronary artery disease

5. Constant emergence of new disease, including those of 20th century: HIV/AIDs, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, encephalopathies = Mad cow spongiform; West Nile virus; bird flu

H. Acceleration of Looming Threat of Man’s Second “Great Revolution” Continuing Through 20th Century