Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
- How does answering these questions affect your sense of participating with the painting?
jac16871_ch02_017-041.indd 33 12/8/17 8:04 PM 34 CHApTeR 2 We feel this is a particularly powerful example of artistic form. For one thing, Gentileschi’s challenge of painting her own portrait likeness in this pose is extraor- dinary. It has been supposed that she may have needed at least two mirrors to permit her to position herself. Or her visual memory may have been unusually powerful. Artemisia Gentileschi was one of the most famous female artists of the seventeenth century. This painting was done in england for King Charles I and remains in the Royal Collection. The painting is an allegory, which is to say it represents the classical idea of the painter, which was expressed as female, pittura. Because no male painter could do a self-portrait as pittura, Gentileschi’s painting is singular in many respects. The color of her clothing—silken, radiant—is rich and appropriate to the painter. Her right arm is strong in terms of its being brilliantly lighted as well as strong in reach- ing out dramatically in the act of painting. Her clothing and decolletage emphasize her femininity. Her straggly hair and the necklace containing a mask (a symbol of imitation) were required by the conventional allegorical representations of the time describing pittura. The contrasting browns of the background simplify the visual space and give more power to the figure and the color of her garment. One powerful aspect of the painting is the light source. Gentileschi is looking directly at her paint- ing, and the painting—impossibly—seems to be the source of that light. The subject matter of the painting seems to be, on one level, the idea of painting. On another level, it is the act of painting by a woman painter. On yet another level, it is the act of Artemisia Gentileschi painting her self-portrait. The content of the painting may be simply painting itself. On the other hand, this was an age in which women rarely achieved professional status as royal painters. The power of the phys- ical expression of the self-portrait implies a content expressing the power of woman, both allegorically and in reality. Artemisia is declaring herself as having achieved what was implied in having the allegory of painting expressed as a female deity. As in the painting by Goya and the photograph by Adams, the arms are of great significance in this work. Instead of a representation of barbarity, the painting is a representation of art itself, and therefore of cultivated society. The richness of the garment, the beauty of Artemisia, and the vigor of her act of painting imply great beauty, strength, and power. We are virtually transfixed by the light and the urgency of the posture. Some viewers find themselves participating so deeply that they experience a kinesthetic response as they imagine themselves in that pose. What significance does the artistic form of the painting reveal for you? How would you describe the content of the painting? Would the content of this painting be different for a woman than for a man? Would it be different for a painter than for a non-painter? What content does it have for you? Subject Matter and Content While the male nude was a common subject in Western art well into the Renaissance, images of the female body have since predominated. The variety of treatment of the female nude is bewildering, ranging from the Greek idealization of erotic love in the Venus de Milo to the radical reordering of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. A number of female nude studies follow (Figures 2-9 through 2-18). Consider, as you look at them, how the form of the work interprets the female body. Does it reveal it in such a way that you have an increased understanding of and sensitivity to the female body? In other words, does it have content? Also ask yourself whether the content is different in the two paintings by women compared with those by men. jac16871_ch02_017-041.indd 34 12/8/17 8:04 PM FIGURE 2-9 Giorgione, Sleeping Venus. 1508– 1510. Oil on canvas, 43 × 69 inches. Gemaldegalerie, Dresden. Giorgione established a Renaissance ideal in his painting of the goddess Venus asleep in the Italian countryside. ©Superstock FIGURE 2-10 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bather Arranging Her Hair. 1893. Oil on canvas, 363⁄8 × 291⁄8 inches. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Chester Dale Collection. Renoir’s impressionist interpretation of the nude provides a late-nineteenth- century idealization of a real-life figure who is not a goddess. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Chester Dale Collection 35 jac16871_ch02_017-041.indd 35 12/8/17 8:04 PM 36 CHApTeR 2 FIGURE 2-11 Venus de Milo. Greece. Circa 100 BCE. Marble, 5 feet 1⁄2 inch. Louvre, Paris. Since its discovery in 1820 on the island of Cyclades, the Venus de Milo has been thought to represent the Greek ideal in feminine beauty. It was originally decorated with jewelry and may have been polychromed. ©DeA picture Library/Art Resource, NY FIGURE 2-12 Rokeby Venus. Circa 1647–1651. 48 × 49.7 inches (122 × 177 cm). National Gallery, London. Velazquez’s Rokeby Venus (Toilet of Venus) is an idealized figure of the goddess. Cupid holds a mirror for Venus to admire herself. ©VCG Wilson/Corbis/Getty Images FIGURE 2-13 Tom Wesselmann, 1931–2004, Study for Great American Nude. 1975. Watercolor and pencil, 19½ × 54 inches. Private collection. Wesselmann’s study leaves the face blank and emphasizes the telephone as a suggestion of this nude’s availability in the modern world. Art: ©estate of Tom Wesselmann/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. photo: ©Connaught Brown, London/Bridgeman Images jac16871_ch02_017-041.indd 36 12/8/17 8:04 PM 37 FIGURE 2-14 Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. 1912. Oil on canvas, 58 × 35 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection. This painting provoked a riot in 1913 and made Duchamp famous as a chief proponent of the distortions of cubism and modern art at that time. ©Association Marcel Duchamp/ADAGp, paris/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2017. photo: ©philadelphia Museum of Art, philadelphia/Art Resource, NY FIGURE 2-15 Standing Woman. Ivory Coast. Nineteenth or twentieth century. Wood and beads, 203⁄8 × 75⁄8 × 53⁄8 inches. Detroit Institute of Arts. Standing Woman was once owned by Tristan Tzara, a friend of Picasso. Sculpture such as this influenced modern painters and sculptors in France and elsewhere in the early part of the twentieth century. It is marked by a direct simplicity, carefully modeled and polished. ©Detroit Institute of Arts/Bridgeman Images FIGURE 2-16 Suzanne Valadon, Reclining Nude. 1928. Oil on canvas, 235⁄8 × 3011⁄16 inches. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Robert Lehman Collection, 1975. Valadon interprets the nude simply, directly. To what extent is the figure idealized? Source: Robert Lehman Collection, 1975/ The Metropolitan Museum of Art jac16871_ch02_017-041.indd 37 12/8/17 8:05 PM 38 CHApTeR 2 FIGURE 2-17 Alice Neel, Margaret Evans Pregnant. 1978. Oil on canvas, 57¾ × 38 inches. Collection, John McEnroe Gallery. Neel’s Margaret Evans Pregnant is one of a series of consciously anti-idealized nude portraits of pregnant women. Courtesy of David Zwirner, New York/London. ©The estate of Alice Neel FIGURE 2-18 Philip Pearlstein, Two Female Models in the Studio. 1967. Oil on canvas, 501⁄8 × 601⁄4 inches. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen B. Booke. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Pearlstein’s attention to anatomy, his even lighting, and his unsensuous surroundings seem to eliminate the erotic content associated with the traditional female nude. Courtesy of the Artist and Betty Cuningham Gallery. photo: ©The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY jac16871_ch02_017-041.indd 38 12/8/17 8:05 PM 39
WHAT IS A WORK OF ART?
Most of these works are highly valued—some as masterpieces—because they are powerful interpretations of their subject matter, not just presentations of the human body as erotic objects. Notice how different the interpretations are. Any important subject matter has many different facets. That is why shovels and soup cans have lim- ited utility as subject matter. They have very few facets to offer for interpretation. The female nude, however, is almost limitless. The next artist interprets something about the female nude that had never been interpreted before, because the female nude seems to be inexhaustible as a subject matter, more so perhaps than the male nude. More precisely, these works all have somewhat different subject matters. All are about the nude, but the painting by Giorgione is about the nude as idealized, as a goddess, as Venus. Now there is a great deal that all of us could say in trying to describe Giorgione’s interpretation. We see not just a nude but an idealization that presents the nude as Venus, the goddess who the Romans felt best expressed the ideal of woman. She represents a form of beautiful perfection that humans can only strive toward. A description of the subject matter can help us perceive the content if we have missed it. In understanding what the form worked on—that is, the subject matter—our perceptive apparatus is better prepared to perceive the form-content, the work of art’s structure and meaning. The subject matter of Renoir’s painting is the nude more as an earth mother. In the Venus de Milo, the subject matter is the erotic ideal, the goddess of love. In the Du- champ, it is a mechanized dissection of the female form in action. In the Wesselmann, it is the nude as exploited. In the Velazquez, the nude is idealized; however, with Cupid holding the mirror for Venus to admire herself, we sense a bit of coyness, perhaps a touch of narcissism. This painting is the only surviving nude by Velazquez. Because the Spanish Inquisition was in power when he painted, it was dangerous to have and dis- play this work in Spain. In 1813 it was purchased by an english aristocrat and taken to Rokeby park. In all eight paintings by men, the subject matter is the female nude—but qualified in relation to what the artistic form focuses upon and makes lucid. The two paintings by Suzanne Valadon and Alice Neel treat the female nude somewhat differently than those painted by men. Neel’s painting emphasizes an aspect of femaleness that the men usually ignore—pregnancy. Her painting does not show the alluring female but the female who is beyond allure. Valadon’s nude is more traditional, but a comparison with Renoir and Giorgione should demonstrate that she is far from their ideal. PERCEPTION KEY Ten Female Nudes 1. Which of these nudes is most clearly idealized? What visual qualities contribute to that idealization? 2. Which of these nudes seem to be aware of being seen? How does their awareness affect your interpretation of the form of the nude? 3. Nude Descending a Staircase caused a great uproar when it was exhibited in New York in 1913. Do you feel it is still a controversial painting? How does it interpret the female nude in comparison with the other paintings in this group? Could the nude be male? Why not? Suppose the title were Male Descending or Body Descend- ing. Isn’t the sense of human movement the essential subject matter? continued jac16871_ch02_017-041.indd 39 12/8/17 8:05 PM 40 CHApTeR 2 4. If you were not told that Suzanne Valadon and Alice Neel painted, would you have known they were painted by women? What are the principal differences in the treatment of the nude figure on the part of all these artists? Does their work sur- prise you?