Photography developed from the camera obscura and was pioneered by Louis Daguerre in the 1830s. Daguerre discovered the daguerreotype process of developing latent images on light-sensitive plates. Pablo Picasso and George Braque were pioneers of Cubism in Paris in the early 1900s, experimenting with abstracting and breaking down recognizable forms. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns challenged the previous generation of Abstract Expressionists in the 1950s by incorporating popular culture and everyday objects into their assemblages and collages.

1. Jake Hicks

3.  Photography developed as a way to fix—that is to make permanent—the
images produced by a camera obscura (later called a camera) on light
sensitive material.
 The camera was a huge step forward for the art world because it
introduced a new technology and artistic tool for artist to use.
 Photography had no single inventor.
 Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre discovered that a plate coated with
light-sensitive chemicals and exposed to light for 20 to 30 minutes would
reveal a latent image when then exposed to mercury vapors.
 In Daguerre’s photography of is studio tabletop, the details are exquisite
and the composition mimics the conventions of still-life painting.
 Daguerre patented his new technology and announced a new type of
photograph called the daguerreotype in August 1839.
 The emerging technology of photography was quickly put to use in
making visual records for contemporary audiences and future
generations.

5.  Pablo Picasso was a towering presence throughout much of the twentieth century,
continually transforming the forms, meanings, and conceptual frameworks of his art as his
style and themes developed in relation to the many factors at play in the world around him.
 He was one of the pioneers of cubism alongside George Braque in Paris in the 1900’s.
 Their style would challenge the viewers to think about the very nature of communication
through painting.
 Cubism proved a fruitful launching pad for both artists, allowing them to comment on
modern life and investigate the ways in which artists perceive and represent the world
around them.
 Braque’s violin and Palette shows the kind of relatively small scale still life painting that the
two artists created during their initial collaborative experimentation as they moved
together toward the gradual abstraction of recognizable subject matter and space.
 Braque knit the various elements—a violin, an artist’s palette, and some sheet music—
together into a single shifting surface of forms and colors. In some areas of the painting
these formal elements have lost not only their formal spatial relations but their coherent
shapes as well.
 Eventually cubism evolved in to synthetic cubism where they began to create works that
suggested more clearly discernable subjects. Neither artists wanted to break the link to
reality.

7.  In the early 1950’s a new generation of artists in New York challenged the artistic
assumptions of the previous generation of Abstract Expressionists.
 They believed that art should be firmly anchored in real life.
 Two artists in particular, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg expanded the
intellectual bases of Abstract Expressionism, cooled its passion and intensity, and
made art that connected to and was inspired by the vastly expanded visual
culture of postwar America.
 They also prefigured the next generation’s interest in introducing popular culture
into art.
 Both artists worked with assemblage and collage.
 Rauschenberg’s Canyon incorporates an assortment of old family photos, public
imagery, and various objects salvaged from the trash.
 The rich disorder and the seemingly sloppy application of paint, challenges the
viewers to make sense of what they see.
 Since he meant his work to be open to various readings, Rauschenberg
assembled material that each viewer might interpret differently.
 Cheerfully accepting the chaos and unpredictability of modern urban experience,
he sought its metaphorical representation in art.