Art-Resource-Guide.pdf - ART AN EXPLORATION OF ILLNESS AND...

Unformatted text preview: ART AN EXPLORATION OF ILLNESS AND WELLNESS IN ART 2019–2020 IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH: An Exploration of Illness and Wellness The vision of the United States Academic Decathlon® is to provide students the opportunity to excel academically through team competition. Toll Free: 866-511-USAD (8723) • Direct: 712-326-9589 • Fax: 651-389-9144 • Email: [email protected] • Website: This material may not be reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part, by any means, including but not limited to photocopy, print, electronic, or internet display (public or private sites) or downloading, without prior written permission from USAD. Violators may be prosecuted. Copyright ® 2019 by United States Academic Decathlon®. All rights reserved. Clements High School - Sugar Land, TX Resource Guide Table of Contents SECTION I: ART FUNDAMENTALS . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Introduction to Art History . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Methods and Inquiries of Art History . . . . . . . 6 The Nature of Art Historical Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Sources, Documents, and the Work of Art Historians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Development of Art History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Brief Overview of the Art of the Western World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Ancient Civilizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Art of the Old Stone Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Art of the Middle Stone Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Art of the New Stone Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Ancient Mesopotamian Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Persian Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Ancient Egyptian Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Nubian Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Greek and Roman Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Cycladic, Minoan, and Mycenaean Art . . . . . . . . . 13 Ancient Greek Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Etruscan Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Roman Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Byzantine and Medieval Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 The Renaissance in Southern Europe . . . . . . 17 The Renaissance in Northern Europe . . . . . .21 Baroque Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 Rococo, Neoclassicism, and Romanticism . . . 25 Realism and Impressionism . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Post-Impressionism and Other Late Nineteenth-Century Developments . . . . . . . . 27 The Emergence of Modernism . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Pop Art, Minimalism, and Photorealism . . . . 31 Earthworks, Installations, and Performance . . 31 Brief Overview of Nonwestern Art . . . . . . 32 Asian Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Chinese Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Indian Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Japanese Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 African and Oceanic Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Islamic Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 The Americas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Elements of Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Formal Qualities of Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Shape and Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Texture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Processes and Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Drawing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Printmaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Painting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Sculpture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Mixed Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Craft and Folk Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Section I Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 SECTION II: ART AND THE PLAGUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Representing the Bubonic Plague in Early Modern Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 2019–2020 Art Resource Guide 2 Clements High School - Sugar Land, TX INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Selected Work: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, c.1562 . . 52 Section III Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82 Selected Work: Josse Lieferinxe, St. Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken, 1497–99 . . . . . . . . . . . 55 SECTION IV: WOMEN, SICKNESS, AND PORTRAITURE . . . . . . . . . . . . .85 The Ideal and the Real Female Body as a Subject in Nineteenth- and TwentiethCentury Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85 Selected Work: Keith Haring, Altarpiece, 1990/1996, Cathedral of Saint John the Divine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Selected Work: David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Falling Buffalos), 1988–89 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 Section II Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 SECTION III: THE RISE OF MODERN MEDICINE . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 The Professionalization of Medical Practice from the Renaissance through the Twentieth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 Selected Work: Filippo Brunelleschi, Ospedale Degli Innocenti, c.1419, Florence, Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 Selected Work: Rembrandt Van Rijn, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 Selected Work: Thomas Eakins, Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), 1875 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Selected Work: James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Maud Reading in Bed, 1883–84 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86 Selected Work: Frida Kahlo, Without Hope (Sin Esperanza), 1945 . . . . . . . . . . 90 Section IV Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 SECTION V: NEURASTHENIA AND VITALITY IN TURN OF THE CENTURY ART . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Neurasthenia and the New Woman in American Art at the Turn of the Twentieth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94 Selected Work: Thomas Wilmer Dewing, A Reading, 1897 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95 Selected Work: John Singer Sargent, Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Phelps Stokes, 1897 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Selected Work: Francis Picabia, Agnes Meyer, 1915 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Section V Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Selected Work: Kadir Nelson, Henrietta SECTION VI: ART AND MENTAL Lacks (HeLa): The Mother Of Modern HEALTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 Medicine, 2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 The Othering of Mental Illness in Art . . 107 Selected Work: HOK with Jack Travis, Harlem Hospital Pavilion Facade, 2005–12, New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 Selected Work: William Hogarth, Illustration of Bedlam from A Rake’s Progress, 1735 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108 2019–2020 Art Resource Guide 3 Clements High School - Sugar Land, TX The AIDS Crisis and Contemporary Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 Selected Work: Théodore Géricault, The Madwoman, 1819–20 . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Representing the Experience of Mental Illness in Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Selected Work: Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (El sueño de la razon produce monstruos), 1799 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120 TIMELINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121 GLOSSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129 Selected Work: Vincent Van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Clements High School - Sugar Land, TX Section VI Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 2019–2020 Art Resource Guide 4 Introduction The first section of the resource guide describes the methods of art history and provides a brief overview of the trajectory of Western art, along with a discussion of Asian, African, Islamic, and Indigenous American art traditions. There is a discussion of the basic formal qualities of art and the techniques and media used to express these elements. The second section of the resource guide investigates how art has responded to the plague and other health crises. This section includes Renaissance paintings created in response to the Black Death and examines the art world’s response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. The third section of the resource guide explores what artworks can tell us about the development of modern medicine. This section examines the architecture of a hospital, surgical scenes from the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, a modern-day portrait commemorating a once-hidden contributor to medical science, and a hospital facade that emphasizes its connections to the local community and African-American history. The fourth and fifth sections of the resource guide deal with gender and medicine. Section IV looks at the use of art to represent the sick female body, whether it be the body of a loved one or the artist’s own self. Section V examines neurasthenia, a nineteenth-century nervous disorder thought to be caused by modernity. This section contrasts the discourse and imagery surrounding the disease with the rising interest in the New Woman, as expressed in images—both representational and abstract—of healthy, dynamic women. The final section of the resource guide studies mental illness in art and how its representation has evolved from the sensationalizing depictions of the infamous Bedlam asylum to more introspective and empathetic images born out of artists’ personal experiences. Examining illness as a subject in art provides a window into how our conceptions of disease, treatment, and health are culturally specific and evolve over time. NOTE TO STUDENTS: Throughout the resource guide you will notice that some terms have been boldfaced and underlined. These terms are included in the glossary of terms at the end of the resource guide. Also, students should be aware that dates in art history, especially early dates, frequently vary depending on the source and are often highly contested. The dates presented in this resource guide are not necessarily definitive, but are those dates provided by the museums that house the artworks or the sources consulted by the author in writing this guide. 2019–2020 Art Resource Guide 5 Clements High School - Sugar Land, TX The fascination with sickness and human frailty transcends media, time, and space. It is a subject that can allow artists to express the concerns of the cultural moment or represent experiences that are not always visible to the naked eye. This resource guide explores eighteen works produced in Europe, North America, and Japan that deal in fundamental ways with disease, illness, and health. The historical range of the artists discussed here stretches from the Italian Renaissance to global contemporary art. The artworks represented include a hospital, an altarpiece, a photograph, paintings, prints, and an art installation. Section 1 Art Fundamentals sculpture, and architecture, usually produced specifically for appreciation by an audience who also understood these objects as works of art. Today Art history is an academic discipline dedicated to the we define art much more broadly, also taking into reconstruction of the social, cultural, and economic consideration objects that in the past were dismissed contexts in which an artwork was created. The basic as “craft”: textiles, pottery, and body art such as goal of this work is to arrive at an understanding of tattoos, for example. Art historians also consider art and its meaning in its historical moment, taking objects that might not be considered art by their into consideration the formal qualities of a work intended audience, including mass-produced posters of art, the function of a work of art in its original and advertisements and even the design of ordinary context, the goals and intentions of the artist and household items like telephones, forks, and the living the patron of the work of art, the social position and room sofa. perspectives of the audience in the work’s original time and place, and many other related questions. Art historians acknowledge that the meaning of a Art history is closely related to other disciplines such work of art can shift over time, and that an artwork as anthropology, history, and sociology. In addition, may be perceived differently by viewers who art history sometimes overlaps with the fields of approach it from different perspectives. To give one aesthetics, or the philosophical inquiry into the hypothetical example, Michelangelo’s paintings nature and expression of beauty; and art criticism, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel would have or the explanation of current art events to the general certainly been significant in different ways in the public via the press. eyes of 1) the Pope, who commissioned the work and who had sophisticated theological knowledge and This brief introduction to the discipline of art history nearly exclusive access to this private space within will help you understand the kinds of questions the Vatican and 2) a worker who was charged with that one may ask in order to arrive at a deeper cleaning the floors of the chapel and whose level of understanding of a work of art. We will put these literacy was probably quite low. Differences such as ideas into practice as we proceed through case social status, education, physical access to a work studies related to the specific topic of the resource of art, religious background, race, and gender have guide. an impact on the construction of the meaning of a work of art. Similarly, the paintings’ meaning to a METHODS AND INQUIRIES OF ART twenty-first-century Protestant, Muslim, or atheist HISTORY is certainly different from the meaning they had Art historians today generally define “art” very for a practicing Catholic in the sixteenth century, broadly and include in their inquiries almost any even though the works may be equally admired for kind of visual material that is created by people and their aesthetic value by all of these viewers. In other invested with special meaning and/or valued for words, the meaning of a work of art is not fixed; it its aesthetic appeal. In the past, art historians often is sometimes open to multiple interpretations taking limited their focus to what was called “fine art,” into consideration factors such as historical context. which generally included paintings, prints, drawings, 2019–2020 Art Resource Guide 6 Clements High School - Sugar Land, TX INTRODUCTION TO ART HISTORY Art historians generally analyze works of art in two ways that are distinct from one another, but also interrelated. These two modes of analysis are called formal analysis and contextual analysis. Formal analysis focuses on the visual qualities of the work of art itself. A basic assumption of formal analysis is that the artist makes decisions related to the visual aspects of the artwork that can reveal to us something about its meaning. From this point of view, aspects of meaning are intrinsic to the work of art. Terms associated with the formal qualities of works of art, or the “elements of art,” are discussed in detail a bit later in this section of the guide. Formal analysis requires excellent skills in observation and description. Beginning our study of an artwork with formal analysis keeps the focus on the object itself, which to the art historian is always primary. Contextual analysis involves looking outside of the work of art in order to determine its meaning. This involves examining not only the context in which the work was created, but also later contexts in which the work was and continues to be consumed. Contextual analysis focuses on the cultural, social, religious, and economic context in which the work was produced. Art historians may examine issues of patronage, viewer access to the work, the physical location of the work in its original context, the cost of the work of art, the subject matter in relation to other artworks of the time period, and so on. Art history often emphasizes a chronological development with the assumption that within one cultural setting the work of one generation of artists will have an impact on following generations. Art historians often use comparative study. For example, by contrasting a Gothic with a Renaissance artwork, we can understand more clearly the unique features of each and the series of stylistic changes that led from one to the other. Then, we can seek to relate these changes to historical context. Art history provides information and insights that add background to the meaning and significance of the works of art we study. As we place these works of art in their cultural and historical context, they are connected to the long history of events that has led up to our present culture. Sources, Documents, and the Work of Art Historians Art historians often begin their analysis with a close examination of a work of art. Direct examination of the work of art is ideal because much is lost when we look at a reproduction rather than an original object. In the case of sculpture, it is often difficult to get a proper sense of the scale and the threedimensional qualities of a piece from a photograph. We lose the texture and some of the rich colors when we experience paintings in reproduction. Even photographs can appear flatter, lacking their subtle transitions from light to dark when seen reproduced in books. It is quite common, though, for art historians to settle for studying from reproductions due to practical constraints. In some cases, works of art might be damaged or even lost over time, and so art historians rely on earlier descriptions to aid in their formal and contextual analysis. In addition to examining the work of art in question, art historians will also seek to understand any associated studies (sketches, preparatory models, etc.) and other works by the artist and his or her contemporaries. Art historians also use many written sources in the quest for contextual information about a work of art. Often these texts are stored in archives or libraries. Archival sources may include items such as letters between the artist and patron, or other documents pertaining to the commission, and art criticism produced at the time the work of art was made. An art historian might also search for written documentation about the materials used to produce the work of art, such as their cost and source, and about the function of the artwork—how a particular sculpture was used in ritual practice, for example. Art historians also seek to situate the work in the context of the literature, music, theater, and history of the time period. Art historians may also rely on interviews with artists and consumers of works of art. This is especially the case in cultures that rely more on oral history than on written documents. Guided by the field of anthropology, some art histor...
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