Friday, October 30, 2009

Brainstorming the Focus of the Paper

Hey gang,

Feel free to edit and add to this but I just need to focus in on some things.
It will help me more forward is I have goals to meet and questions to answer.
This is NOT how Im suggesting the paper to be outlined. Just the information we
should collect as a group. They are just some paths Im thinking we could go down
as we write this paper--focusing on portraits thats create a status, why, how, ect...

The Power of the Portrait/Icon - Portraits though out time

I. Historical Influence
1. What's going on during your assigned time period?
2. Who is in charge? People of status and power?
3. What is the new and old technology?
4. What are the issue people are facing?
II. Why/Purpose of the Portrait during our assigned time period
1. Why are portraits being made in this time period?
- commission, parody, status
2. What is they saying?
3. Who was making the portraits? Who is being painted?
4. In what context are portraits being use?

III. Fine Art Portraits of the time
1. What is fine art at the time?
2. How does that effect the power of the portrait?
3. How is the art world different?
4. Personal, Status or Parody?

IV. Illustration Portraits of the time
1. What is its purpose?
2. Who is the illustrators to know?
3. ect, ect, ect.
4. Why were they making them?
5. Where were you seeing them?



note: Have to remember to mention actually illustrations for my timeline and not just modern art.....any suggestion?

Paleolithic QUOTES

The Chauvet Cave is a cave in the Ardèche department of southern France that contains the earliest known cave paintings, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life.

The Hall of Bears. This big cave bear, between the heads of two animals of the same species, was produced by using the natural contour for the relief of the front paw. Note the use of shading on the head (Chauvet, 31)” [scan 31]

“The Panel of The Horses. This great ensemble shows the Panel of the Horses and the facing rhinoceroses… followed by some horse heads and two felines, then a central niche with seven-legged bison, the vertical animal and the cow, on its right hand wall. To the right is the Reindeer Panel. A certain composition in relation to the niche with animals of different species, seems to have been sought in the layout. (Chauvet, 60.)” [scan 60-3]

“The Lion Panel. This big panel presents a composition comparable to that of the Panel of the Horses, with the accumulation of different animals on either side of a central niche (Chauvet, 106)” [scan 106-9]

“…humans are extremely rare in Paleolithic art. Chauvet cave is no exception, since not one image of a human figure has been found there yet. There are only some segments of the body and one composite being. In the entrance chambers, a panel of red paintings contains three negative hands, made by spitting paint in the stencil technique, and five positive hand prints… Finally, a few metres from the Lion Panel at the end. And opposite it, a hanging rock has two black felines and a horse on one side, and, on the other side, a black creature, upright and leaning slightly forward; the top of its body is that of a bison and the bottom is that of a human, with the two legs will indicated. This being occupies all the available space and faces the Lion Panel. It is this figure that one sees first when one arrives in the chamber [plate 93]. (Chauvet, 110)” [scan 110-1]

A boy gazes bright-eyed from this remarkably well-preserved portrait, produced about 1,800 years ago and unearthed in Egypt in modern times. Painted on a wood panel with encaustic – colored pigment mixed with wax – this works has a lifelike, human quality that vanished from artistic efforts after the Roman Empire collapsed in the in the Fifth Century (Seven Centuries of Art: Survey and Index, 7).” [scan 6]

“The Look Of Real People. Portraiture crept into painting by a side door, as it were. Before the start of the Renaissance, portraits were seldom produced for their own sake. But they were often included in religious paintings to honor a patron. AN artist would include the man who commissioned the painting among the Madonna or witnessing the Crucifixion… As painterly skills increased, portraits of donors became more and more lifelike and revealing of individual character, as can be seen in the marvelous double likeness by Jean Fouquet of Etienne Chevalier, a French court official, and of a prayerful young man posing as his patron saint (Seven Centuries of Art: Survey and Index, 27).” [scan 26]

“Originally the wing of an altarpiece commissioned by Chevalier (Etienne Chevalier and St. Stephen, c. 1450), this work shows how Fouquet, the greatest French painter of the early Renaissance, combined realistic detail developed by the Flemish artists with a breadth and power he had learned on visits to Italy. It was but a step from this to such secular portraits as Ghirlandaio’s An Old Man and His Grandson, which captures both the contrast between the old man’s ugliness and the fresh beauty of the child and the poignant interplay of their love for each other (Seven Centuries of Art: Survey and Index, 27).” [scan 27]

BREAK IT DOWN

Evan - Beginning of time to Renaissance
Paleolithic Cave Painting
Ancient Egyptian murals/sarcophagi
Ancient Asian sculpture
Ancient Meso-American reliefs/sculpture
Ancient Greek murals/mosaic/sculpture
Ancient Roman murals/mosaic/sculpture
Byzantine murals/mosaic
Gothic Painting
Pre-Renaissance Painting

Micheal - Renaissance to 19th Century
Renaissance
Mannerism & Baroque
Rococo
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
Realism

Babs - 19th Century to Present
Impressionism
Post-Impressionists
Expressionism
The Fauves
Futurism
Cubism
Surrealism
Geometric Abstraction
Abstract Expressionism
Pop Art
Op Art
Outsider Art
Multiculturalism

Types of Portrait
(Note: Many of these categories will overlap)

Commissioned
Ideals, Icon, Religious
Political
Celebrity

Questions to answer across the board:
Who is the portrait of?
What is the purpose?
What is the context?

Monday, October 12, 2009

Initial Reference Texts

Chauvet, Jean-Marie, Eliette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire. 1996. Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave, The Oldest Known Paintings in the World. Harry N. Abrams Inc.: London.

de Cessole, Bruno, Annie Forgeau, Frederic Valloire, Anne Chene and Yves Saint-Hilaire. 1997. Louvre: Portrait of a Museum. Stewart, Tabori & Chang: New York

Graham, Jenny. 2007. Inventing Van Eyck. Berg: Oxford, New York.

Schulz, Regine and Matthias Seidel. 2009. Egyptian Art: The Walters Art Museum. GILES: London.

ed. Albersmeier, Sabine. 2008. The Art of Ancient Greece: The Walters Art Museum. Philip Wilson Publishers: London.

ed. Chiu, Tony, Lee Greene, Robert Morton, Lucille Schulberg, David S. Thomson and L. Robert Tschirky. 1970. Seven Centuries of Art: Survey and Index. Time, Inc.

ed. Noel, William and Daniel Weiss. 2002. The Book Of Kings: Art, War, and The Morgan Library's Medieval Picture Bible. Third Millennium Publishing Ltd.: London.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Some Resources

The class blog.
http://historyofillustration.blogspot.com/

Selection of hi-res images of some portraiture throughout history.
http://n4trb.com/ArtHistory/art_history.htm

A simple site that separates the 19th century into stylistic time periods, with some lead artists and links to their work.
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/art/19_ptg.html