This document provides information about art history concepts and assignments. It discusses four songs from the 1980s, elements of art like shape and line, and strategies for analyzing images through denotative and connotative meanings. It also outlines an upcoming exhibition review assignment and provides details on submitting the assignment. Key events in art history are reviewed, including the transition from Renaissance to Modernism.

1. Songs of the Day
“Money for Nothing”
by Dire Straights
from 1985 album Brothers in Arms
“Material Girl”
by Madonna
from the 1984 album Like a Virgin

2. Songs of the Day
“Land of Confusion”
by Genesis
from 1986 album Invisible Touch
“Don’t come around here
no more”
by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
from the 1984 album Southern Accents

3. More strategies / tools for reading and
analyzing art. Specifically, denotative /
connotative understanding
Look at images in an art historical context to
understand the significance of history and
social connections. Art does not exist in a
bubble.
Today’s lecture helps to set up
Postmodernism / Contemporary Art
(the primary focus of our semester)
Today’s Schedule

4. Assignments:
Exhibition Review #1
Directions are posted on d2l
DUE: Tuesday, October 1st by midnight – in the
dropbox on D2L

5. Save your file as: yournameER1.doc
Do not upload formats other than .doc
or .docx – any other formats
WILL NOT BE GRADED)
ex: TraciQuinnER1.doc

6. To Review
ELEMENTS
OF
ART
-­‐
The
elements
of
art
are
the
building
blocks
used
by
ar>sts
to
create
a
work
of
art.
1. Shape
2. Line
3. Value (light and dark)
4. Texture & pattern
5. Color
6. Space

7. To Review
KNOW THESE TERMS AND HOW THEY INFORM AN ARTWORK
PRINCIPLES
OF
ART
-­‐
The
principles
of
visual
art
are
the
rules,
tools
and/or
guidelines
that
ar>sts
use
to
organize
the
elements
of
art
in
an
artwork.
1. Balance
2. Emphasis and focal point
3. Proportion and scale
4. Unity and variety
5. Rhythm

8. Reading Images
Denotative meaning is the formal elements of an image –
what can be described in FACTS. Denotative meaning refers
what you Describe/ What do you see?
Denotation = Description
Connotative meaning is the interpretive meaning that comes
from social, cultural, and historical contexts. Connotative
meaning brings to an image the wider realm of ideology,
cultural meaning, and value systems of society. What ideas
come to mind when you look at an image? What does it
evoke?
Connotation = Interpretation / Content

9. get into small groups…
Denotative meaning is the formal elements of an image –
what can be described in FACTS. Denotative meaning refers
what you Describe/ What do you see?
Denotation = Description
Connotative meaning is the interpretive meaning that comes
from social, cultural, and historical contexts. Connotative
meaning brings to an image the wider realm of ideology,
cultural meaning, and value systems of society. What ideas
come to mind when you look at an image? What does it
evoke?
Connotation = Interpretation / Content

10. get into small groups…
Denotative meaning
Connotative meaning
Medium, Balance, Emphasis and focal point, Proportion and
scale, Unity and variety, Rhythm

11. get into small groups…
Lauren Greenfield, Thin, 2006

12. get into small groups…
Denotative meaning
Connotative meaning
Medium, Balance, Emphasis and focal point, Proportion and
scale, Unity and variety, Rhythm

13. get into small groups…
Imran,
Quershi,
“And
How
Many
Rains
Must
Fall
Before
the
Stains
Are
Washed
Clean,”
2013

14. Renaissance...
Modernism…
Postmodernism

15. Art History Vocabulary
• Era
• Period
• Movement
• School
• Style

16. Art History Vocabulary
Era
– Historically significant chunk of time such as
100-20,000 years
– Geographically large
– International
– global
– Distinguished by common, unifying
characteristics

17. Art History Vocabulary
Period
– Historic chunk of time shorter than an Era
– Geographically limited (usually a single
country)
– Distinguished by common, unifying
characteristics
– Not well-defined – could refer to the entire
rule of a European monarch (i.e. “Victorian”
period) or an individual artist’s phase (i.e.
Picasso’s “blue” period)

18. Art History Vocabulary
Movement
– Historic chunk of time that is relatively short (months
or years)
– Geographically very specific
– Distinguished by common, unifying characteristics
– Group of artists banded together to pursue a
specific objective (particular artistic style, political
mindset, common enemy, etc.)
– Benefits:
• Support each other
• Hold their own exhibitions
• Annoy the Art Establishment

19. Art History Vocabulary
School
– Sometimes refers to an actual educational
institution and the artists who trained there
– Often used as a synonym for movement – a
group of artists in a specific place with
common goals and a shared style – a sort of
informal or grassroots school
• Example: The Hudson River School – a mid-19th
century American art movement carried out by a
group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision
was influenced by romanticism.

20. Art History Vocabulary
Style
– Common look (form and/or composition)
employed by an artist, school, or movement
• Examples: Cubist, pointillist, photorealist, etc.

21. Pre-modernism = Renaissance
(an era)
Some key ideas leading up to modernist art
Modernism:
Modern art (an era) was a reaction to what
came before, such as The Renaissance.

22. Remember, we are setting up for…
Postmodernism
(the primary focus of our semester)

23. c.1400
Lots of
religious art,
and a few
other things
Timeline of Western Art

24. c.1400
c.1874
Renaissance
An era that saw many movements,
periods, schools, and styles. (i.e.
Baroque, Mannerism, Realism,
Rococo, Romantic)
Lots of
religious art,
and a few
other things

25. Modernist
Era
c.1400
c.1960
c.1874
Impressionism
Lots of
religious art,
and a few
other things
Renaissance
An era that saw many movements,
periods, schools, and styles. (i.e.
Baroque, Mannerism, Realism,
Rococo, Romantic)

26. Modernist
Era
c.1400
c.1960
c.1874
Lots of
religious art,
and a few
other things
Post-
modernism
Renaissance Impressionism
An era that saw many movements,
periods, schools, and styles. (i.e.
Baroque, Mannerism, Realism,
Rococo, Romantic)

27. From c. 1450-1870, ideas and techniques developed during the
Renaissance dominated Western art.
Three important ones:
BEAUTY
ILLUSION
RELIGIOUS / SECULAR THEMES

28. 1. Beauty

29. Beauty in proportion
The Golden Mean or The Golden Ratio
1:1.618034. . .

30. Iktinos & Kallikrates, Parthenon,
447-432 BCE, Athens, Greece,
Marble, 228’ x 104’
The ancient Greeks knew the
golden ratio from their
investigations into geometry.
Studies have been devised to
test the idea that the golden
ratio plays a role in the human
perception of beauty. Though
inconclusive, a large body of
beliefs about the golden ratio
exist.

31. Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper , 1495-98
Santa Maria della Grazie, Milan
Golden Ratio

33. Beauty in aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with
the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the
creation and appreciation of beauty.
Aesthetics change based on time and history
Western medieval aesthetics
Modern aesthetics
Postmodern Aesthetics

34. Beauty in aesthetics

35. 2. Illusion
observed Reality as a kind of Truth
This was not always valued in art!

36. Perspective
(within the artworks
themselves)
• Atmospheric
• Linear

37. Perspective
Atmospheric
– Objects in the distance are hazy or less well-defined
than objects in the foreground (no sharp lines)
– Colors in the background are more muted; less contrast
and smaller range of values

38. Raphael's Madonna
of the Meadow, 1505,
Italy, panel painting,
44 x 34"
Atmospheric
perspective
Sfumato: a low-contrast style of
painting – no extreme darks or
lights

39. Perspective
Linear: Objects appear smaller as their distance
from the observer increases
– Horizon line is depicted or implied
– Objects are foreshortened (dimensions along the line of
sight are relatively shorter than dimensions across the
line of sight)
– Parallel lines have a vanishing-point (a point
somewhere in the distance where they will eventually
meet)

40. Linear Perspective

41. Linear Perspective

42. Linear Perspective

43. 3. Religious / Secular
Themes

44. Religious Themes
The Church was arguably the largest
supporter of the arts.
• Using images to speak to the public
– (many people were illiterate)
Belief in the power of images to convey
messages

45. Giovanni
Bellini
San
Zaccaria
Altarpiece
1505

46. Caravaggio
The
Incredulity
of
Saint
Thomas
1601

47. Secular Themes
In addition to religious images, around
1400 (approx. time of the beginning of the Renaissance)
painters and sculptors began to
depict:
• Average people
• (portraits & genre paintings)
• Historical events
• Everyday scenes
• (landscapes & home interiors)
• Stories from mythology

48. Leonardo da Vinci,
Mona Lisa, c.
1503-1505, panel, 30
x 21”, The Louvre,
Paris

49. Jan Davidsz de Heem (Netherlands), A Table of Desserts, 1640, oil on
canvas, 59 x 80”, The Louvre, Paris

50. Thomas Cole, Landscape, 1825, oil on canvas

51. John Singer
Sargent,
Beatrice
Golet, 1890

52. Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii, 1784

53. Jacques-Louis David, Bonaparte Crossing the St. Bernard
Pass, 1801

54. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, 1814

55. Eugène Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus, 1828

56. Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830

57. We move from the era of the
Renaissance to…
Modernism
(another era)

58. The Modern Era
What major technological/social event in the
19th century changed the lifestyles of
most of the Western world?
the Industrial Revolution

59. The Modern Era
What major technological/social event in the
19th century changed the lifestyles of
most of the Western world?

60. Causes of change in art were social and technological,
not aesthetic:
• Growth of cities
• New methods of transportation and communication
(i.e. internal combustion engine, railroads,
lightbulb, phonograph, telephone)
• Change in political systems and structures; Increased
democracy
• Secularization of modern society
• Availability of photography to general public
• Interest in our inner life (the psyche) – Freud et al.
Modernism

61. Modernism in a nutshell
• New economic, social and political conditions of a
changing, industrialized world. (ideas, activities
and creations of people who thought "traditional"
forms of art, architecture, literature, religion, social
organization and daily life were becoming
outdated)
• The traditions of the past (the certainty of
Enlightenment/Renaissance thinking) were cast
aside in a spirit of experimentation (new ways of
seeing, new ideas about the nature of materials
and functions of art, embracing uncertainty)
• Affected many aspects of culture and society, not
limited to visual art and artists

62. Beauty
Illusion
“realism”
Secular Themes
Art as
autonomous
object

63. Five recurring themes in modernist art:
1. Seeing and perspective
2. Abstraction
3. Expression
4. Fantasy
5. Concept/idea
MEMORIZE THESE!

64. 1. Seeing and perspective
New ways of looking at things; capturing
new/unfamiliar aspects of familiar things

65. Claude Monet, Gare St-Lazare,,1877;
French, oil on canvas, 32 1/2" x 39 1/9ﾓ, Fogg
Museum, Harvard University; Boston, Mass.
Captures the experience of
modernity, of being in the station:
the smoke, the light, the sensations
Spontaneous sensations and
impressions of modernity
Impressionism
Accurate depiction of
reality – historical record
William Frith, Paddington Railway
Station, 1882, oil on canvas, 117
x 257 cm, Royal Holloway and
Bedford New College, Surrey,
England

66. Impressionist Painters
• Interested in a new way of seeing – paintings not
meant to be analyzed or decoded logically &
intellectually
• Preoccupied with change, impermanence, and
instability - probably a reflection of the urban,
industrial world that surrounded them
• They tried to capture spontaneity: “this very
instant”
• Interested in depicting fleeting qualities of light
and color in nature
• Made scenes of pleasure/leisure from their own
lives

67. Compared with the Academic
painting that came before, it
looked messy and unfinished.

68. Claude Monet, Waterlilies with Clouds, 1903, oil on canvas