8)
ББК 71.63.3я73
С60
Автор-составитель:
кандидат педагогических наук Соловьева Е.Г.
Рецензенты:
доцент кафедры «Иностранные языки» КГЭУ, кандидат филологических наук
Г. Р.Муллахметова
доцент кафедры всемирного культурного наследия ИМОИиВ КФУ, кандидат исторических
наук, Тимофеева Л.С.
Соловьева Е.Г.
Мировая художественная культура: Учебно-методическое пособие / Е.Г.Соловьева. – Казань:
Изд-во Казан. ун-та, 2017. – 82 с.
Расшифровка
Шифр компетенции
приобретаемой компетенции
способностью ориентироваться в системе общечеловеческих
ОК-1 ценностей и учитывать ценностно-смысловые ориентации
(общекультурные различных социальных, национальных, религиозных,
компетенции) профессиональных общностей и групп в российском социуме
- (ОК-1);
ОК-2 - способность руководствоваться принципами культурного
(общекультурные релятивизма и этическими нормами, предполагающими отказ
компетенции) от этноцентризма и уважение своеобразия иноязычной
культуры и ценностных ориентаций иноязычного
социума (ОК-2);
Виды и часы
аудиторной работы,
Раздел их трудоемкость
N Дисциплины/ Семестр (в часах) СРС
Модуля
Практические Лабораторные
Лекции
занятия работы
Тема 1.
Введение в
мировую
художественную
культуру.
1 4 2 2 0 2
Культура
древнего мира
Первобытная
художественная
культура
Тема 2.
Художественная
4
2 культура 4 2 2 0
Древнего
Востока
Тема 3.
Художественная 4
3 4 2 4 0
культура
античного мира
Тема 4.
Художественная 4
4 4 2 2 0
культура
средневековья
Тема 5.
Гуманистическая
5 4 2 2 0 4
культура
Возрождения
Тема 6. Культура
6 эпохи барокко и 4 2 2 0 4
Просвещения
Тема 7.
Художественная 4
7 4 2 2 0
культура эпохи
Романтизма
Тема 8. 4
8 4 2 2 0
Художественная
культура
реализма
Тема 9.
Художественная
4
9 культура 4 2 2 0
современного
общества
Тема . Итоговая зачет
4 0 0 0
форма контроля
Итого 18 20 0 34
Тема 1. Введение в мировую художественную культуру. Культура древнего мира.
Первобытная художественная культура
The key features of Egyptian civilization The concept of afterlife, reflected in myphology and art.
Cult of the dead and the role of art in it. The traditional immobility of Egyptian art. Monumental
forms of expression in Egyptian art. The purposes the Egyptian architecture and sculpture serve.
Egyptian large-scale sculpture. The influence of Egyptian achievements on Greek and Roman art.
Speak of the Egyptians' attitude towards death and afterlife as expressed in their tombs The egyptian
views on life on this earth as a road to the grave Egyptian tomb as a kind of life insurance.
The role of mythology in forming of antique visual arts' subjects . Classical Greek art . The
Parthenon as the greatest achievement of all Greek architecture of the classical period. The
fundamental principles of Greek architecture . Three orders of architecture. Greek classical sculpture
. The Doryphorus as the standard embodiment of the classical ideal of human beauty (The Canon ) .
Movement in statues ( "Discus Thrower" ). The greatest sculptural ensemble of the severe style of
the Temple of Zeus at Olympia . The Phidian style . The importance of the architecture of classical
period and its influence upon the architecture of all centuries to come. Etruscian art . The system of
Roman values and their reflection in art. The monumental tendencies of Roman architecture .The
Colosseum. The evolution of constructive elements in Roman architecture. Roman monumental and
domestic architecture . Speak about Roman religious architecture (" Temple of Fortuna Virilis",
"The Pantheon", "Temple of the Sibyl", "Temple of Venus" ). The role of literature and theatre in
Roman culture. Compare Greek and Roman artistic culture
Medieval artistic culture. The main ideas of middle ages. The ecclesiastic character of medieval art.
The peculiarities of Gothic and Romanesque architecture. Basilica as the main form in Gothic and
Romanesque architecture. Medieval Russian art. The Moscow Kremline. The outstanding icon-
painters Theophanes the Greek and A.Rublev. A.Rublev's Trinity as one of the great creations of
Medieval Russian painting
The Renaissance humanism and its humanic values 2.The ideal viewpoint of the Renaissance 3.The
early Renaissance in Italy (Giotto, Masaccio, Van Eyck, Botticelly) 4.The High Renaissance in Italy
. The artistic endeavor of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo Buonarroti. 5. The
peculiarities of the artistic culture of the Renaissance in the North. 6. Painting and the graphic arts
(A.Durer, P.Brueghel the elder, I.Bosch). 7. The reflection of new outlook in architecture, sculpture,
literature, theatre and music of Renaissance.
General characteristic of the epoch. A notion "baroque" 2. A new attitude to the world and its
reflection in art. High ideals of baroque. 3.The peculiarities of artistic culture of the XVII-th century.
4.P.P.Rubens -the typical representative of "baroque" style. 5. Rembrandt as the master of profound
psychological insight. 6. D.Velasques as a great realist. 7.The masterpieces of Vermeer. 8. The
baroque architecture and sculpture (G.Bernini, F.Borromini) 9. The Enlightment as a European anti-
feudal movement. 10. The main features of Enlightment in Russia, France and England.
The origin of the notion "Romanticism" and its general characteristics. 2. The history of the
movement. 3. The aim and the worshiped values of the Romantics. 4. The specific features of
Romanticism in Russia, Germany, France and England. 5. Two tendencies of the English
Romanticism. 6. The contribution made by Romanticism to world culture.
The origin and history of realism. 2. Realism in French art. Courbet and Daumier. 3. The realistic
tendencies in Russian art. The peculiarities of "critical realism" in Russia. The Society of Wandering
Art Exhibitions' rebel against the Academy of fine arts. 3.The main points of the Pre-Raphaelite
conception of art. 4.The Impressionism and its role in the artistic life of France. 5.The impressionist
palette and technique. 6.The Post-impressionism and its contribution to world art.
The general characteristic of modern epoch. 2. The main trends in development of modern art. 3.
XX-th century European artistic culture. 4. Painting before World War II. The main currents. The
Fauves:Matisse. Non-Objective painting:Kandinsky. Abstraction. Cubism:P.Picasso. Futurism and
Dynamism. Suprematism:K.Malevich. Dada:Duchamp. . Surrealism:S.Dali. 5. Painting since World
War II. Abstract Expressionism.Pop art.Photo Realism. Conceptual art. 6. Constructivism and
surrealism in sculpture. Kinetic sculpture. 7. Twentieth-century architecture. 8. Photography today:
fantasy, abstraction, documentary photography.
Задания для самостоятельной работы студентов:
Дискуссия:
What does prehistoric man represent in the paintings on cave walls? Does he represent himself
in these paintings? The role of magic and ritual in the art of prehistoric man The images of bisons,
deer, horses and cattle races across walls and ceilings The technique of a primitive cave art What
ideals did Paleolithic man associate with the grave? Dolmens and cromlechs What were some of the
forms of artistic endeavor in prehistoric times? What did the arts of the historic era derive their
subject matter and style from? What prompted man start creating works of art? What puzzles us
about the cave painting? What stimulated a primitive man applying to art? What are the main
functions of the primitive art?
Презентации:
The entire structure of Stonehenge .What are the most remarkable features of Stone- henge?
What puzzles does Stonehenge offer mankind? Venus of Willendorf - "the ideal of beauty" of a
primitive man
Реферат на одну из тем ( по выбору):
Место и роль художественной культуры в профессиональной
деятельности лингвиста
Мировосприятие архаического человека.
Образы зверей в первобытном искусстве.
Роль музыкального сопровождения обрядовых действий.
Звериный стиль в изобразительном искусстве.
Женщина в древнем мире.
Деловая игра: Palaces and castles of the European and Asian rulers.
Домашнее задание: The ancient near east Assyrian art. Persian art. Mesopotamian art. What
was all Mesopotamian statuary intended for? Was the artist's sphere strictly limited? Could the artist
appeal to or influence public taste? What materials did artists use in their work?
Индивидуальные задания:
Средневековый город.
Храм как синтез искусств.
Площадной театр средневековья.
Аллегория и символика в средневековом искусстве.
Рыцарская музыкально - поэтическая лирика как явление средневековой культуры.
Основные виды и жанры средневековой литературы.
Проанализируйте христианские мотивы в операх Вагнера «Тангейзер», «Лоэнгрин»,
«Летучий голландец».
Сравнить западноевропейский готический храм и христианский храм России.
Рефераты, презентации:
Софийский собор в Киеве.
Храм Василия Блаженного в Москве.
Фрески Дионисия.
Образы древнерусской живописи.
Языческие символы в изо искусстве Англии (V-XI века) и Древней Руси.
научный доклад , примерные вопросы:
The centers of artistic activities in the Middle ages. What two main types of church buildings were
inherited from early Christianity? What were the peculiarities of Gothic architecture? Why can we
say that the Rheims Cathedral is one of man's richest accomplishments in design? Why did
architecture and sculpture become equal partners? What two tendencies developed side by side in
early Russian architecture? What new concept of the fortress wall did the Italians introduse in
building the Kremlin?
What did Rublev do to transform the severe symbolism of the Byzantine tradition
презентация , примерные вопросы:
1.The uniqueness of St.Basil's architecture 2.The method of work introduced by Theophanes the
Greek in Russian church painting. 3.Compare a Gothic cathedral and an old Russian church. Speak
on their plan, structure, material, influences, ornamentation
Рефераты, презентации.
Особенности формирования нового миропонимания.
Красота гуманизма.
«Божественная комедия» Данте как памятник мировой культуры.
Творчество Шекспира и его вклад в мировую культуру.
Литература французского Возрождения.
Литература и театр Испании в эпоху Возрождения.
Фантазии и реальность в творчестве И. Босха.
Мир человека в творчестве П. Брейгеля.
Художники немецкого Возрождения.
ИЗО искусства Нидерландов в XVI веке.
Отражение нового миропонимания в музыке Возрождения.
Воплощение гармонии в живописи, скульптуре, архитектуре Ренессанса.
Presentations: 1.The timeless art of Rembrandt Van Rijn. 2. The greatest and the most human artist
of all times - Rembrandt. 3. Peter Paul Rubens - the prince of baroque painters. 4.The concept of
simple reality in Caravaggio's paintings. 5. Gainsborough as the purest lyricist of English painters. 6.
Reynolds - the master of the epic style. 7.Two portraits of Mrs.Siddons by Gainsborough and
Reynolds. 8.The moral painting of W.Hogarth
Terminological dictation
Syncretism, canon, Hera, Zeus, Aphrodite, Hermes, Dionysus, The Doric, Ionic, Corinthian orders ,
pylon, capital ,volute, frieze, pediment, arch, dome, basilica, portal, stained glass window, diptych,
altarpiece, blind arch, apse, fresco, pilaster, icon, iconostasis, mural, Renaissance, perspective,
composition, glaze, Leonardo's"sfumato", baroque, etch, print, rococo, ceremonial portraiture, the
style of Fcfdemic painting, impressionism, spot technique, plain-air manner, fauvism, cubism, The
Wanderers, the "avant- garde».
домашнее задание , примерные вопросы:
1.How can you characterize the development of art in the early part of the XX century?
2. What influences can be traced in Matisse's painting? 3. Picasso's creative genius has found
expression in a variety of mediums. What are they? Illustrate. 4. What do the images in"Guernica"
suggest? 5. How can painting in America since World War II be characterized?
презентации , примерные вопросы:
1. Cezanne's contribution to XX century art. 2. The great decorative artist - Matisse 3. XX century
art trends in America and Russia. 5 .An outstanding painter, sculptor or musician of the XX-XXI
century.6 .The concepts of pop art and pop culture.
Visual dictation
1. Wounded Bison from the cave at Altamira in Spain
2. Animals in the cave at Lascaux
3. Venus of Willendorf
4. Stonehenge
5. The pyramid of Zoser
6. The great Sphinx
7. The statue of prince Rakhotep and his wife Nofret
8. The gold coffin of Tutankhamen
9. Snake Goddness
10. The Lion gate
11. The theatre Epidaurus
12. Doryphorus
13. Discobolus
14. The Laocoon group
15. She-Wolf
16. The Colosseum
17. Arch of Titus
18. Rheims cathedral
19. The Church of the Intercession on the Nerl
20. The Virgin of Vladimir
21. The Trinity
22. The church of St.Basil's
23. Leonardo da Vinchi "The last supper"
24. R.Santi "Sistine Madonna"
25. Michelangelo 'The Pieta","David"
26. P.Brueghel "The blind, leading the blind"
27. A.Durer "The Apocalypse cycle"
28. W.Hogarth "Marriage a la Mode"
29. V.Serov "Girl in sunlight"
30. Manet "Luncheon on the grass»
31. P.Picasso "Guernica"
32. V.Van Gogh "The potatoe eaters".
Информационные ресурсы
Основная литература:
1.Борзова Е.П. История мировой культуры. - СПб.: Изд-во «Лань», 2001. - 672 с.
2.История мировой культуры (мировых цивилизаций): учебное пособие для студентов
вузов, обучающихся по гуманитарным специальностям и направлениям / [Г. В. Драч и др.];
под науч. ред. Г. В. Драча.Издание 4-е.Ростов-на-Дону: Феникс, 2005.533, [2] с.: ил., табл.;
21.(Высшее образование).Авт. указаны на обороте тит. л..Библиогр. в конце гл..ISBN 5-222-
07649-0(в пер.), 4000.
3.Борев Ю. Б. Художественная культура XX века (теоретическая история) [Электронный
ресурс] : учебник для студентов вузов / Ю. Б. Борев. - М.: ЮНИТИ-ДАНА, 2012. - 495 с. -
(Серия 'Cogito ergo sum'). - ISBN 978-5-238-01214-8.
4.Креленко Н. С. История культуры: от Возрождения до модерна: Учебное пособие / Н.С.
Креленко. - М.: НИЦ ИНФРА-М, 2014. - 320 с.: 60x90 1/16. - (Высшее образование:
Бакалавриат). (переплет) ISBN 978-5-16-006591-5, 500 экз.
http://znanium.com/bookread.php?book=398642
5.Толстикова И. И. Мировая культура и искусство: Учебное пособие / И.И. Толстикова;
Науч. ред. А.П. Садохин. - М.: Альфа-М: ИНФРА-М, 2011. - 416 с.: 60x90 1/16. (переплет)
ISBN 978-5-98281-253-7, 1000 экз. http://znanium.com/bookread.php?book=226262
6.Кошман Л. В. История русской культуры IX - начала XXI века: Учебное пособие / Л.В.
Кошман, Е.К. Сысоева и др.; Под ред. Л.В. Кошман. - 5-e изд., доп. и перераб. - М.: НИЦ
ИНФРА-М, 2014 - 432 с.: 60x90 1/16. - (ВО: Бакалавр.). (п) ISBN 978-5-16-006060-6, 800 экз.
http://znanium.com/bookread.php?book=360222
7.Ильина Т.В. История отечественного искусства от крещения Руси до начала третьего
тысячелетия: учебник для бакалавров / Т. В. Ильина ; Санкт-Петерб. гос. ун-т.?5-е изд.,
перераб. и доп..Москва: Юрайт, 2013.473 с., - 30 экз.
8.Павленко Л. Г. Talks on British Painting. Беседы о живописи Великобритании
[Электронный ресурс] : учеб. пособие / Л.Г. Павленко; под ред. В.Д. Селезнева. – 3-е изд.,
стер. – М. : Флинта, 2012.– 240 с. : ил.)
9.Фалькович М.М., Лебединская Е.М., Стрелкова Н.С., Цигельная А.Д. How to speak about
art in English. М., «Международные отношения»,1976.- 216с.
Janson, H. W. History of art –Third edition.- New York.: 1986. – 824с.: ил.
14.
Дополнительная литература
Интернет-ресурсы:
WEB LINKS
www.nationalgallery.org.uk
www.vam.ac.uk/page0-9/18th-century-fashion
Глоссарий
Архитектура – вид искусства, целью которого является создание сооружений, отвечающих
утилитарным и духовным потребностям людей, включая их эстетические потребности.
Графика – вид изобразительного искусства, в основе которого лежит рисунок, выполненный
линиями и штрихами.
Гуманизм ( от лат.humanus – человеческий, человечный) – признание ценности человека как
личности, его права на свободное развитие, утверждение блага человека как критерия оценки
общественных отношений. Понятие «гуманизм» зародилось в ХV веке ( в эпоху
Возрождения), окончательно сформировалось в Х1Х веке.
«Диалог культур» - в широком смысле слова - способ существования человека как субъекта
и « продукта» культуры, «онтология» индивидуального бытия. Идея диалога культур как
залога мирного и равноправного развития впервые была выдвинута М. Бахтиным. Вся
человеческая культура в истолковании М. Бахтина выступает как «большой диалог», за
каждым словом которого - человек, личность. Под диалогом в узком смысле слова Бахтин
понимает речевое явление, диалог как самостоятельный вид речевой деятельности. «Диалог»
как средство коммуникации культур предполагает такое сближение взаимодействующих
субъектов культурного процесса , при котором они не подавляют друг друга, не доминируют,
а «вслушиваются».
Духовная культура – это процесс и результат духовного производства (науки, искусства,
религии, философии, мифологии, морали и др.)
Духовность – способность человека оставаться человечным по отношению к людям при
любых обстоятельствах. Ядро духовности составляют такие ценности как правда и совесть,
свобода и справедливость, нравственность и гуманизм
Жанр ( фр. genre – род, вид ) – исторически сложившиеся внутренние подразделения в
видах искусства. Принципы разделения на жанры специфичны для каждой из областей
художественного творчества. Каждому жанру присущи определенные, характерные только
для него, средства художественной выразительности. Это единство специфических свойств
его формы и содержания. В жанре раскрывается общность содержания, отбора жизненных
явлений, их художественного воплощения, оценки особенностей эмоционального
воздействия. Жанр связан со всеми сторонами образной структуры искусства и прежде всего
с темой, сюжетом, композицией. В современных условиях происходит сложный процесс
переплетения и взаимодействия жанров, рождение их новых разновидностей ( рок-опера,
стихотворная проза и т.д. ).
Живопись – вид изобразительного искусства, специфика которого заключается в
представлении при помощи красок, нанесенных на какую-либо поверхность, образов
действительности.
Знак – материальный объект (артефакт), выступающий в коммуникативном или
трансляционном процессе аналогом другого объекта, замещающий его. Знак является
основным средством культуры, с его помощью осуществляется фиксация и оценка
индивидуальной и общезначимой информации о человеке и мире в культурных текстах.
Искусство – это особая форма художественно-творческой деятельности человека, целостно
отражающая действительность в художественных образах. Понятие искусство употребляется
в трех смыслах и означает: 1) мастерство, искусную техническую деятельность, результатом
которой является искусственная, внеприродная деятельность. Этот смысл вытекает из
древнегреческого «технэ» - искусство, мастерство; 2) творчество по законам красоты (
создание вещей, культура повседневного поведения и общения людей) и т.д.; 3) собственно
художественное творчество как особый вид социальной деятельности, продуктами которого
являются специальные духовно-эстетические ценности.
Историзм – принцип научного познания объективной действительности, в соответствии с
которым вещи и явления должны рассматриваться в их развитии, в связи с конкретными
условиями их исторического существования.
Культурные нормы – это определенные образцы, правила поведения, действия, познания.
Катарсис – ( от греч. catharsis – очищение ) – духовное очищение, эмоциональная разгрузка,
внутреннее освобождение, которое испытывает человек в процессе общения с высшими
образцами культуры. Термин был введен Аристотелем в работе «Поэтика» для обозначения
возвышенного удовлетворения и просветления, которые испытывает зритель, пережив вместе
с героем трагедии страдание и освободившись от него.
Литература – вид искусства, эстетически осваивающий мир в художественном слове.
Личность ( от лат. – маска, роль актера) – термин, обозначающий социальный тип человека
как продукта и носителя исторически определенной культуры и выполняющего
определенные функции в системе сложившихся общественных отношений. Личность
является единичным воплощением культуры, конкретным выразителем всей совокупности
общественных отношений.
Локальная культура – культура, существующая в определенном месте и не связанная с
имеющимися культурами вне ее; обладающая своим набором индивидуальных,
неповторимых черт.
Ментальность – ( от франц. «mentalite» - мироощущение, мировосприятие) – глубинный
психологический уровень коллективного или индивидуального сознания. Ментальность или
менталитет – это относительно устойчивая и целостная совокупность мыслей, верований,
навыков духа, которая создает картину мира и скрепляет единство культурной традиции или
какого-либо сообщества. Менталитет формируется в культуре под воздействием традиций,
социальных институтов, среды обитания человека и представляет собой совокупность
психологических, поведенческих установок индивида или социальной группы. Он
объединяет ценностные формы сознания с бессознательными психическими состояниями,
определяя тем самым целостный образ жизни человека или социальной группы.
Мечеть – культовое здание в исламе, где имамом или муллой совершаются богослужения и
произносятся проповеди. Она имеет прямоугольный двор, окруженный галереями,
прямоугольное основное здание со сферическим куполом и многоколонным молитвенным
залом.
Материальная культура – это вещественный результат и средство материального
производства, объекты, созданные руками человека (артефакты).
Минарет ( от араб. – маяк ) – башня, находящаяся возле мечети, с которой муэдзин созывает
верующих на молитву.
Мировые религии – группа из трех религий ( буддизм, христианство,
ислам ), отличающиеся полиэтнической распространенностью и отсутствием выраженной
этноцентричности в своей догматике.
Монументальное искусство – род изобразительного искусства, отличающегося большим
масштабом произведений, значительностью идейного содержания ( скульптурные памятники,
стенная роспись, витражи и т.д.)
Музыка – искусство, закрепляющее и развивающее возможности невербального звукового
общения.
Натурализм – ( от лат.naturalis – природный, естественный ) – один из ведущих принципов
европейской культуры эпохи Возрождения и просветительской мысли ХУП – ХУШ веков (
натуралистическое изображение земного мира, концепция «естественного человека»,
естественного общества, морали, права и т.д.); философский взгляд на мир, согласно
которому природа выступает как универсальный принцип объяснения всего сущего,
исключающий все внеприродное.
Национальная культура – синтез культур различных слоев исторически сложившейся
общности людей, характеризующейся единством территории, социально-экономической
деятельности и менталитета. Национальные культуры письменны, передаются через
образование
Орнамент (от лат. ornamentom – украшение) - узор, состоящий из ритмически
упорядоченных геометрических или растительных элементов для украшения каких-либо
предметов или архитектурных сооружений.
Семиотика – ( от греч. semiotic – учение о знаках) – общее название комплекса научных
теорий, изучающих различные свойства знаковых систем как способов коммуникации между
людьми посредством знаков или языка. Выступает наукой о знаковых системах, в том числе о
культурных знаках, являющихся носителями культурной информации.
Символ – знак, указывающий на определенный объект и несущий добавочный смысл,
выражающий общие идеи и понятия, связанные с толкованием этого объекта. Символы
составляют базовый язык культуры
Скульптура – вид изобразительного искусства, произведения которого имеют трехмерную
форму. Главная особенность скульптуры – способность передавать характер, внутренний мир
человека в объеме и движении.
Театр – вид искусства, художественно осваивающий мир через драматическое действие,
осуществляемое актерами на глазах у зрителя.
Текст – система знаковых элементов, обладающая способностью передавать смысл; ( в
широком семиотическом смысле) – любой предмет или процесс как культурный феномен,
несущий в себе закодированную в какой-то знаковой системе социальную информацию.
Тип – ( от греч. typos ) – отпечаток, форма, образец, модель, которым соответствует
определенная группа предметов, явлений. Этот термин используют для обозначения чего-то
однородного, обобщенного.
Типы культур - целостные культурные образования, возникшие у данного народа или
совокупности народов, имеющие общие черты, характеристики, свойства, проявления
культуры, отличающие те или иные культуры от других, не похожие на культурные
образования других народов.
Толерантность – терпимость индивида, группы к нормам и ценностям иной культуры.
Художественный образ – это специфическая форма отражения действительности и
выражения мыслей и чувств художника. Художественный образ, отражая те или иные
явления действительности одновременно несет в себе целостно-духовное содержание, в
котором органически слито эмоциональное и интеллектуальное отношение художника к
миру.
Ценность – это личностно окрашенное отношение к миру, возникающее не только на основе
знания и информации, но и собственного жизненного опыта человека.
Язык культуры – универсальная форма осмысления реальности. В широком смысле этого
понятия подразумевающая те средства, знаки, формы, символы, тексты, которые позволяют
людям вступать в коммуникацию друг с другом, ориентироваться в пространстве культуры.
Вопросы к зачету
ПРИЛОЖЕНИЕ
PREHISTORIC BEGINNINGS
When primitive people reached north-west Europe, they gathered wood and hunted. It was the
Stone Age, as their greatest creative achievement was having produced the stone tools and weapons.
The history of art goes back to this time. In the caves of Spain and France ancient hunters left the
drawings of animals which reveal their striving to support life. It was the art of hunters. The objects
of their drawing were bisons, mammoths, horses, bears, goats, bulls, lions and other animals who
ensured their existence. These drawings reflect the belief of the man in something supernatural, a
primitive religious instinct seems to have motivated him to produce the drawings which were
designed to secure success in the hunt. But there are no such drawings in Britain. Perhaps the
struggle for existence in the arctic climate exhausted the energies of northern hunters.
1. Stonehenge
Shortly before 2000 BC men of the New Stone Age bringing a Mediterranean tradition arrived in
Britain. They were the builders of the great stone tombs. Stonehenge is the noblest monument of the
Neolitic and succeeding Early Bronze Age. Its construction lasted four centuries, approximately
1800–1400 BC. Nowhere else there is anything like it: an outer circle of stones nearly eight and a
half metres high, pillars that support a lintel, and within it a horseshoe of ten even huger stones, set
in pairs, each pair with its lintel. These great blocks of sandstone, some of them weighing fifty tons,
were dragged more than twenty miles from the chalk downs. Each was carefully dressed to fit for its
function. Before it fell into ruin Stonehenge must have had the grandeur of an Egyptian temple.
There can be little doubt that it was a temple. It stood quite isolated surrounded by a ditch and
Neolitic worshippers watched the procession of priests about the ambulatory.
Тема 2. Художественная культура Древнего Востока
Egyptian Art
From the dawn of history Egyptian art tended towards monumental forms of expression.
Architecture, serving primarily the worship of the dead, the state religion and the glorification of
the ruler, developed as an art that strove to overcome the transitory nature of life on earth. The belief
that an essential condition for the posthumous life of man was the preservation of his bodily remains
and their safe placing in a tomb which would withstand the ravages of time and human interference
compelled them to build massive stone tombs. Gigantic royal pyramids were made, first in a
terraced form and then with smooth sides, either pointed or truncated. The same principles underlay
the architecture of the temples, which ensured for the rulers a continued existence in the beyond and
the lasting favours of the gods.
The walls of the temples were covered with pictures showing events in the lives of the gods and the
kings. Both in relief and in painting, the main feature was outline drawing, colour being used simply
to fill in the drawing.
In its initial stages Egyptian sculpture served purposes similar to those of architecture. It depicted
the dead, thereby guaranteeing the dead soul a posthumous existence. But it was also used to
decorate architecture, sculptures of gods and pharaohs, usually carved in hard stone, were placed
close to the temples as images of the deities and kings.
Egyptian sculpture had always shown a surprising feeling for realism, both in tiny statuettes and
monumental statues as seen for example in the expressive sculptural portraits of King Amenhotep
IV, his wife Nefertiti and their children and in the statuettes of King Tutankhamen.
The art of ancient Egypt is no dead or exotic thing. It was from Egypt that Greek art received its first
stimulus.
Greek Art
The Greek culture of the first centuries after the Greek invasion of the Balkan peninsula is
represented in small artistic objects excavated from tombs. The most usual art forms were vase
painting, marked by geometrical designs, and small religious figurines in clay.
Archaic Greek art (eighth century to second quarter of fifth century В. C.). During the eighth
century pottery expanded and made use of animal motifs (figures of griffons, sphinxes, beasts of
prey, birds, etc.).
A monumental element began to appear in Greek art about 600 В. C. when architecture and
sculpture ceased to use wood and clay and began to make use of stone. The small sanctuary started
to evolve into the vast Greek temple.
One of the oldest temple buildings, of which chiefly small fragments of the stone structure have
survived, is the Temple of the goddess Hera at Olympia, a construction with wooden pillars of about
the seventh century В. C. The wooden pillars were replaced around 600 В. C. by stone columns,
first monolithic, later composed of several segments, thus giving rise to the Doric order in
architecture. To this group of early temples also belongs the Temple of Apollo at Corinth, where the
columns were made of enormous monoliths. The temples of the Doric order retained their solemn
and rigid character down to classical times.
The architectural style of Greece as expressed in the Doric style developed into another order in the
sixth century. In the Greek settlements of Asia Minor and on the Aegean Islands the Ionic order was
evolved in which the slender, tall columns have deeply fluted shafts, a complex base, and on the
ornamented headpiece is a capital with a pair of outwardly curling spirals called volutes. The origin
of the Ionic order can be traced to the influences of the architecture of Western Asia, with its plant
elements in the capital and the relief decorations on the Iricze.
In the earliest periods the Greeks had used mainly limestone for sculpture but when they discovered
marble they found Ihemselves dealing with a material that was technically and aesthetically
superior. The brittleness of marble set certain limits to the complexity of the figures, while the
possibilities of a precise and meticulous fashioning of the form and of the smooth surface of the
statue amply made up for any shortcomings.
The most spectacular successes were the work of Attic sculp- lors who solved the problems of
depicting physical shape by their nttempts to create figures in motion which would be artistically
effective from all angles. These endeavours were so widespread towards the end of the fifth century
that even the decora- 1 ion on the pediments of temples came to consist of free-standing, lliree-
dimensional statues.
From the beginning of the sixth century onwards vase paint- ing began to use figure subjects within
a framework of geometrical ilcsign and ornamental adornment. The most important themes were
those of mythological, ceremonial and moral subjects, a specific product of the Greek imagination,
and mostly inspired by epic literature.
The painters used black and white varnish on the red background of the vase, applying silhouette
form and scratching lie design in black.
The invasion of Greece by the Persians and the subsequent counter-attack and expulsion of the
enemy from Greece, are events which divide the archaic from the classical period (from 480 to
second quarter of third century) in which Greek art reached its culminating point.
Designers in Greece produced architectural forms which proved to be a basic source for designs for
the following twenty-five centuries throughout the world.
The Parthenon, a temple honouring the goddess Athena, was erected on the Acropolis, a fortified
hill in Athens, between the years 447 and 433 В. C. Constructed in marble with ingenuity and
sensitivity, it stands, even in ruins, as one of man’s most noble expressions. Possessing ideal
proportions, a grandeur of form, and a perfect harmony between an absolute simplicity and
ornateness, this Greek temple achieved classical design perfection. The Parthenon’s designers
obtained a visual perfection within the temple through both harmony of proportions and numerous
subtle compensations for proper visual reactions in viewing an elongated rectangular temple. In the
lower area of the Parthenon the long horizontal steps were curved slightly upward to refute a natural
optical illusion which would imply a slightly concave movement in perfectly straight steps. The
Doric columns were designed to lean gently inward, for perfectly straight perpendicular pillars
would appear to slant forward. The columns also deceived and satisfied the eye through a light
swelling in the shaft which provides a visual sensation of regularity when viewed from below.
The fair number of more or less well preserved temples in Greece and Sicily show many of the
different formal variants in which the temples of the Doric order were built at this time.
In the middle of the fifth century there appeared sculptors whose works were regarded as
unsurpassable by the ancients. At this time that master of body movement, the bronze caster Myron,
produced his famous work, which has been copied many times, the “Discus Thrower”
(“Discobolus”). Here for the first time the body is depicted in contorted movement, and the mecha-
nism of the bones, tendons, and muscles is scientifically analysed. Not only did the artist catch the
young man at the very moment when he was about to hurl the discus, but he also managed to
express the emotional tension of the moment. Polycletus who also worked in bronze, achieved the
suggestion of movement by the contrast between the leg on which the weight rested and the free leg
as in his famous statue of the “Spear Bearer”.
One of the greatest artists of the times was Phidias. Judging by the reproductions of his statues of
Athena at the Parthenon and Zeus at Olympia, Phidias must have been an artist of great genius,
whose work summed up the achievement of the past. His .sculptures which are endowed with serene
dignity and lofty stateliness remained unsurpassable models to be followed by the artists of antique
culture.
It is typical of the fourth century that many gods disappeared from sculptural iconography, except
for the few who appealed to art for aesthetic rather than for religious reasons. Most popular was the
figure of Aphrodite, which provided opportunities for the gradual unveiling of the female figure.
The ideal of the beautiful body continued to dominate, and youthfulness continued to be considered
a necessary adjunct, but sculptors were already beginning to take an interest in the body at a more
mature age, and eventually in the physical characteristics of old age. Realism found an open field for
further development. The urge to present characteristic details permitted the incorporation even of
ugly features and the deformation of facial expressions. A powerful force which sculpture inherited
from dramatic literature was the endeavour to express emotions. The body could now be twisted into
unaccustomed poses and the play of the hands and faces made to assume different expressions.
The great master of the period, Praxiteles, introduced a love for the sensual aspects of the human
body and for calm moods. Kven the copies of his lost works (as the “Cnidian Aphrodite”) retain, in
reproductions made by ordinary craftsmen, something of the enchanting magic of his art, in which
he balanced sensuality and emotion, realism and idealism with a discipline that was still conditioned
by the classical spirit. The greatness of Praxiteles’ art can be appreciated in the statue of “Hermes
Carrying the Infant Dionysus”, found in the ruins at Olympia. The carefree, elegant posture of the
figure, the beauty of the body and the semi-veiled look in the eyes show how far sculpture had
advanced in humanising the gods.
The high standard of sculpture at the very conclusion of the classical period is shown by a number
of original works now in existence. Among them is the partially undraped “Venus of Milo”, which
probably came from the first half of the fourth century, and ‘ The Winged Victory of Samothrace”, a
work made towards the end of that period. In them the pose of the body is given a forward
movement of extreme complexity, heightened by the fluid drapery of light garments both of which
are achievements of formidable virtuosity.
Certain changes in the system of orders took place in the Hellenistic period. The Doric order lost
some of its rigidity, the
column became more slender, the crossbeams narrower, and the spaces between the columns were
enlarged. The more adaptable Ionic order was used increasingly in architecture with greater
variation and more ornamental features as seen, for example, in the Corinthian capital.
The secular architecture of the Hellenistic period proved far more vital. A few excavations have
revealed to us the appearance of Hellenistic towns such as Pergamum, Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Among these one of the most significant is Pergamum where large sections of the town were
excavated, including the royal palace, the market place, the gigantic altar of Zeus with its famous
frieze and reliefs, and the temple of Athena at the top of the hill on which the town was built.
Roman Art
Many seeds, derived from early Grecian and Etruscan designs, had already been sown in Rome
with the erection of temples such as Jupiter Capitolinus (509 В. C., reconstructed in the first century
A. D.)
Both the Etruscan influence, which led toward the use of round arches to secure vaulting and dome
construction, and Grecian influence are apparent in the Pantheon (originally built in 27 В. C. and
modified in 120 A. D.).
The Romans proved highly inventive and while more concerned with detail, they were also more
experimental than the Greeks in their temple construction. Modifying and expanding earlier forms to
suit their purpose, the Romans often used nonsupporting columns for decorative effects, exposing
them completely or partially embedding them in walls, and they also made extensive use of a wide
range of coloured marble. They were master builders, further developing methods of vaulting large
areas with the round arch and the dome as well as producing well-engineered bridges, aqueducts and
roads. By the end of the fourth century В. C. Roman engineers had managed to construct extensive
public utilities, such as the paving of the Via Appia, the Appian aqueducts and the open drain for the
valley between the hills of Rome, sections of which were supported by arches. Vast spaciousness
and splendour were evident in the bathhouses of Rome, and they usually contained libraries, lecture
rooms, and stadiums in addition to facilities for hot or cold baths. Over nine hundred of these
structures were erected before the decline of Rome in the fifth century A. D. At its height the Em-
pire had fifty thousand miles of excellent roads serving as innumerable fingers of influence which
carried Roman law and customs into the universe of the ancient distant provinces from England and
France to Northern Africa and Asia Minor.
The evolution of new constructive elements was aided by Important technical discoveries. Apart
from stone Roman architecture soon began to make use of bricks, which at the peak of Roman
architecture became the main building material because of their adaptability. The invention of
concrete provided a material that encouraged the monumental tendencies of Roman architecture. All
these technical innovations were used to create interior space.
In the field of architecture the Romans inaugurated a new epoch that stood in sharp contrast to that
of Greece; but in the fields of sculpture and painting they succumbed to Hellenic influences, even
though they managed to imprint their own character upon at least some aspects of artistic work, thus
advancing the evolution of what they had borrowed.
In Hs main characteristics Roman art was essentially national despite its close connection with
Hellenic art. It brought the classical tradition to a point of evolution at which it was capable of
taking on a new direction, and thus formed the starting point for the art of the Middle Ages.
Medieval art was almost exclusively ecclesiastical, and its centre of activities was the church.
Architecture concentrated on creating a House of God. From early Christianity the Middle Ages
inherited two main types of church buildings — the elongated basilica and the circular church. The
basilica, having proved suitable throughout long centuries of Christian worship, became the main
form in Romanesque and Gothic architecture and its derivation. Circular churches, also adopted
from Christian antiquity, were used only for special purposes. This type became popular especially
in the Byzantine east serving as private places of worship in palaces and castles or as funeral
chapels. There are only a few examples in Western Europe.
Gothic architecture was born out of the experiences gained during the final phases of
Romanesque architecture. The new architects took over many features of Late Romanesque
architecture, subjecting them, however, to a new ideal of structural lightness, less massive, and
demanding more sophisticated forms. Gothic architecture endeavoured to organize the space of the
basilica into a unity, in which the significance of the walls was minimized, and the building was
raised to soaring heights, stressing the vertical principle throughout in the compositional rhythm of
all parts of the structure. The final and predominant aim was the attainment of imaginary space,
elevating man’s mind into the supernatural sphere.
THE GOTHIC STYLE IN ENGLAND
The appearance of, the Gothic style in England cannot be adequately explained by the
penetration of French influences. Occasionally some important English Gothic buildings, such as the
choir of Canterbury Cathedral (1174) or Westminster Abbey (1245), exhibit very close and definite
connections with contemporary French works; but always there are insular modifications. The
majority of English Gothic buildings do not look in the least French.
When English masons became aware of what was happening in northern France, it was almost
inevitable that they should interpret those developments in harmony with their own predilections.
That is, they saw Gothic art not as an alternative system of' construction but rather as an alternative
system of decoration. But precisely because of this peculiarity they created another type of Gothic
which in many ways anticipated the later Gothic styles of the Continent. The period 1290—1330
was perhaps the most brilliant in the whole of the Middle Ages in England. The complicated series
of works at Wells, and the great octagon at Ely are especially impressive. The name “Decorated
style” is sometimes applied to the highly decorated works of this period.
The most typical feature of Perpendicular style was the widespread use of rectangular panels
of tracery.
RENAISSANCE ART
Introduction
The Renaissance, an age of discovery, found painters deeply concerned with investigations and
experiments. New importance was given to the human figure, which now became one of the
essential motifs of all painting and the basis of Renaissance humanism. In its initial stages
Renaissance painting was stimulated by antique sculpture to an intensive study of the human body
— its structure and mechanism. The 15th century artists were fascinated by science, mathematics,
geometry and above all perspective. The breadth of knowledge of these artists was astounding,
ranging from the simplest craft processes to the highest intellectual speculation.
Giotto (1266/76—1337)
The history of painting in Western Europe begins with the thirteenth-century pioneer, Giotto.
From the relatively stiff artistic background of his time Giotto developed a majestic, sculptural style
which set Italian art on its future path. Although his technical contribution to painting is enormous,
Giotto’s great feeling for humanity makes his work a high point in the movement toward the
humanizing of art and life begun early in the century. In both respects he is a key figure, his
personality stamped on the whole course of Italian art. For more than two hundred years after his
death artists acknowledged their debt to this master of monumental dignity and controlled emotional
strength.
The young Giotto helped with the frescoes in the great church of St Francis in Assisi. Here the
young apprentice absorbed both the flat-patterned, emotional art of his own teacher (Cima- bue, a
Florentine artist) and the rounded forms of the painters
from Rome who had been influenced by the ancient sculptures in the Eternal City. Giotto
combined these qualities to form a new and personal style.
In a “St Francis” done for the Church of Santa Croce in Florence, Giotto repeated the powerful
sculpturesque impression and sense of dignity achieved by him earlier in his frescoes painted at
Padua. To these elements he added the quality of decorative symmetry. “The Death of St Francis”
reveals a carefully balanced composition which increases the effectiveness of the presentation in a
way that was to become increasingly characteristic of Italian art.
In a neat shallow box space the deathbed is flanked by two doorways, each with its group of
five mourners. Another five stand against the rear wall, while three figures kneel on either side of
the bed. The actuality and solidity of these figures is heightened by the draperies covering them.
This powerful impression of form is apparent even over the shoes of the foreground characters
whose faces are not seen, but whose reality cannot be doubted.
Masaccio (1401—1428/29)
Giotto’s method had been to outline the figure and, through the powerful contour, suggest a
third dimension. Line was a shorthand method of indicating form; it carried the eye of the spectator
in the directions desired by the painter. Masaccio achieved a considerable optical illusion of depth in
his landscapes, as well as in the painting of architectural constructions, applying the laws of
perspective. Masaccio’s method is illustrated by the famous “The Tribute Money”. It differentiates
between the light that falls on a rounded figure and the shadows it casts — more or less what
actually happens in nature. The light-and-dark, or chiaroscuro technique was conceived almost at
one stroke. During a period of perhaps three years, the artist developed this new way of building up
the mass of a form and of placing it in a given part of three-dimensional space. The effect of his
remarkable feat can be traced in the work of the great masters of the High Renaissance.
Masaccio was also able to portray figures out of doors so convincingly that they appear to blur
as they move away from us. Linear perspective reproduces the effect of forms growing smaller in
the distance. With his new aerial perspective Masaccio pointed out that they also grow dimmer and
out of focus
Realism became a force that gave new life to art in the whole of Europe during the early
fifteenth century, and one of its leading figures was the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck.
Jan van Eyck discovered for himself that the illusion of reality could be heightened by a
systematic arrangement of light and shade which subdued the colour of the object and created
atmosphere.
The paintings of Jan van Eyck have an enamel-like surface giving an almost jewelled effect',
the particularly shiny and transparent quality is due to the use of the newly-developed oil-and- egg
emulsion. The rooms are filled with atmosphere that seems so real as to be almost tangible. This
atmospheric effect is a constant feature of Flemish painting. Along with the luminous detail and
highly polished finish of the various objects, it turns up once more in the Dutch painters of the
seventeenth century like Vermeer.
Van Eyck’s great masterpieces are the paintings for the altar at Ghent: “The Betrothal of the
Arnolfini” and “The Rollin Madonna” (or “The Virgin with Chancellor Rollin”). He reached his
greatest triumph in the painting of portraits which stressed the unique human features of each
individual.
Botticelli (1445—1510)
Botticelli is one of the great poetic painters — sensitive, withdrawn from the world, interested
in the expression of a delicate and exquisite feeling unmatched in his or almost any time. In strong
contrast to the sculpturesque scientific method of the Giotto-Masaccio tradition, Botticelli’s work is
a gentle, lyrical, poetic style worked out with flat picture surfaces and decorative flowing linear
effects. Emotionally it is never brutal or overpowering, but diffident, reserved, subtly suffering.
“The Birth of Venus” is the poet-painter’s evocation of the goddess of love out of the sea. In a
remote and self-absorbed way, she stands on a cockleshell, blown shoreward by breezes represented
on the left. The semicircular composition is completed by the woman on the right who eagerly waits
to receive the nude goddess. In spite of this arrangement the picture is not balanced in the
monumental Masaccio manner; it is rather a series of twisting, turning lines and forms. The painter
is not interested in stressing the three-dimensional or sculptural quality, but rather in evoking
emotional effects through the restlessness of outline and mood.
The movement begins with the intertwined forms of the breezes as they fly toward the right,
their draperies blowing wildly and wings tensely arched. It continues with the deliberately off-
centered Venus and her curling, snake-like hair. Finally it ends in the forward-moving, draped
woman and the sinuously curved, almost metallic covering she holds ready for the goddess. The eye
of the spectator follows the restless curving lines and constantly changing movement from one side
to the other and from top to bottom. Although Venus is the central figure, the artist has placed her
far enough to the right to lead us in that direction. Nor is she the dramatic centre of the work, for the
energetic breezes and the eager young woman at the right are just as significant.
A special place in the treasury of world graphic art belongs to Botticelli’s superb series of pen
drawings for Dante’s “Divine Comedy” which date from about 1485—1490. His other drawings
rank just as high.
Botticelli’s exquisite, poetic drawing of “Abundance” has long been looked upon as perhaps
the most beautiful Florentine drawing in the world. It is not a study for a painting, but a drawing
done for its own sake and highly finished. It is a fine pen drawing with brown wash on a light
reddish ground heightened with white. The horn of plenty and the children on the left are done in
black chalk. While as a rule we speak of Botticelli as a linearist, it is clear that in this masterpiece
there is added a tonal effect which is the result of a skilful combination in the use of brush and pen.
The history of western civilization records no man as gifted as Leonardo da Vinci. He was
outstanding as painter, sculptor, musician, architect, engineer, scientist and philosopher, and was
unquestionably the most glittering personality of the High Renaissance in Italy. Leonardo was
renowned in a period that produced such giants as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian, and his fame,
unlike that of many of the great masters has suffered no eclipse to this day.
Leonardo da Vinci was born in Tuscany, the illegitimate son of a successful notary and a
peasant mother. By 1469 Leonardo was living in Florence where he served an apprenticeship with
Verrocchio, who, to quote an old story, “gave up the brush when his pupil proved a greater artist
than he.” Even as a youth he displayed an aptitude for all manner of achievement, a winning charm,
and a personal strength and beauty which have become almost legendary.
Few of Leonardo’s paintings have come down to us: only about eighteen in all, some left
unfinished, some damaged or deteriorated as a result of his experimental techniques, and others ob-
scured by discoloured varnish.
Before Leonardo, there had been two parallel trends in Italian painting: the monumental
scientific side represented by Masaccio and the more decorative, linear and poetic side, expressed in
Botticelli. Leonardo achievel a combination of these two trends. His impressive idealised forms are
worked out with every consideration for scientific knowledge, and yet seem surrounded by an aura
of poetic sentiment. By the ’eighties of the fifteenth century, however, he far outshone his
predecessors and contemporaries in the monumental composition of his paintings and the stress he
laid on visual plasticity.
The earliest work from Leonardo’s hand which we know today is the angel in profile at the left
in Andrea del Verrocchio’s “The Baptism of Christ”, painted probably in the early 1470's when
Leonardo was still in Verrocchio's workshop. In Verrocchio’s workshop Leonardo could obtain the
best education of his time, not only in art but in independent and scientific thinking. In those days
the artists had to do everything themselves without outside help; they got ready suitable panels or
canvases, ground and mixed pigments, prepared oils, varnishes, and glues. It was Verrocchio who
not only transmitted the artistic ideals of Donatello to Leonardo, but who also transmitted to him
many technicalities of scientific research and the love of science.
In Verrocchio’s studio Leonardo nourished his mind and exercised his skill in every possible
way. It seems that his earliest efforts were in the field of drawing and sculpture, yet he had also
begun to paint, and his first masterpiece “The Adoration of the Magi” was produced shortly after
leaving Verrocchio’s workshop in 1481. It was not finished and it remains today as Leonardo left it,
with only the first brown underpainting laid on.
Unfortunately, he was too busy with a host of other projects to finish many pictures. One of the
greatest of the few he left is “The Madonna of the Rocks”. Here, in one painting, are the qualities
that make Leonardo a typical artist of the late or High Renaissance: an increasingly idealised
portrayal of human beings and a formal, mathematical arrangement of the persons in the picture.
The conception of the children in this picture, the gently smiling angel and the otherworldly
Madonna, all contribute a feeling of more than human nobility and perfection. The figures move in a
dignified, restrained way, their gestures have a solemnity and poise that are seldom found in
ordinary people.
The most characteristic device of almost all High Renaissance artists is to fit the figures into a
specific geometrical pattern: a pyramid in this conception of the Madonna, a circle in Botticelli’s
pictures, a parallelogram or a circle in Raphael’s. This gives a systematic and ordered quality to the
works of the High Renaissance.
In Milan Leonardo worked on many important projects including “The Madonna of the Rocks”
and “The Last Supper”. The latter (perhaps the best-known painting in the world) offers one of the
finest instances of a rigid geometric enclosure. Everything turns inward toward the head of Christ,
even the expressive gestures of his own hands. In spite of the great excitement within the work,
complete formal control is maintained. We can appreciate the artist’s way of presenting the human
drama where Christ discloses to his followers quietly that soon one of their number is to betray him
and their cause. It is the reaction of the followers, the study of people and their attitude to a shocking
announcement that the great artist is concerned with.
In fact, Leonardo’s main contribution to art was the way he rendered the real world around
him. He made a human being look as if you could step into the flat surface of the picture and walk
around behind it. This was possible because of his understanding of light and shade and of
perspective. In the profound composition, the calm of the figure of Christ is in poignant contrast
with the tragic turmoil his words have caused among his disciples. The figures of the apostles
standing out as in high relief are illuminated by a clear and penetrating light, behind them are
shadow and the orderly architectural details of the room, and beyond the windows, a landscape
bathed in twilight glow. There is, in “The Last Supper” an imposing grandeur of conception and a
powerful plasticity in the forms.
Unfortunately he tried out some new ideas with the paint that he used and this was to prove
most fatal as the picture began to peel and blister only a few years after it was finished. “The Last
Supper” is now only a ghost of its original self. It was painted on a wall of the refectory of the
Convent of Dominican Friars, in Milan, at the order of Lodovico Sforza. It was painted not in true
fresco but in an experimental oil technique and in a short time began to deteriorate because of the
dampness of the wall.
However, no matter how badly preserved Leonardo’s paintings may be, they all command our
attention by a strange and intimate fascination. Unlike other Renaissance painters who sought to
convey a clear and understandable message through their paintings, Leonardo created an enigma, a
problem to which he gives no answer. There is a deep and complex inner life to his figures that finds
a parallel only in those of Rembrandt.
The personality of Mona Lisa, for instance, impresses itself upon us vividly but there is always
something about her which we cannot grasp. “Mona Lisa” is one of Leonardo’s greatest works
because of its plasticity, the delicate rendering of light and shade, and the poetic use of his so-called
“sfumato” to emphasize the gentleness and serenity of the sitter’s face and the beauty of her hands.
It is the supreme example of Leonardo’s unique ability to create a masterpiece which lies between
the realm of poetry and the concrete realism of a portrait. That is why the painting is so disquieting
and why it has aroused so many divergent theories. Actually, the portrait is the fusion of Leonardo’s
artistic beliefs: the idea that it is humanly possible to represent nature visually in all the fullness of
its realism; the deep nostalgia, characteristic of Leonardo’s generation, for a calm and remote
beauty; and the individual characterisation which was the aim of Renaissance portraiture. The
landscape background is a splendid page of romanticised geology, a natural lock, below, holding
back the blue lake and the river.
Leonardo’s facility of execution is without limit. Nature seems to present no problem that he
does not solve. His draughtsmanship is always effortless and perfectly accurate whether in flowers,
as in the foreground of “The Virgin of the Rocks”, in the human figure or in distant mountains, as in
the background of “The Saint Anne”. The forms are strong and convincing. They are modelled with
extraordinary subtlety so that the surface has a delicate living quality, an excellent example of which
is the strange mobile smile of Mona Lisa. The use of half light and soft shadows increases this
effect. The important parts of Leonardo’s paintings are emphasized by greater clarity of light where-
as the background is treated in mysterious half shadows.
Little is known about his colour, but judging from the recent cleaning of the London version of
“The Virgin of the Rocks” it was generally subdued for the sake of the greater delicacy of modelling
with occasional brighter accents of cold contrasting tones that add to the strange and mysterious
atmosphere.
The only authentic self portrait of Leonardo done in red chalk in his last years is executed in a
firm, clear style.
Introduction
The latter part of the 16th century marked the decline of Italian painting. The men that came
after Michelangelo and Tintoretto could only repeat what the others had said or recombine the old
thoughts and forms. This led inevitably to imitation, over-refinement of style and conscious study of
beauty, resulting in mannerism and affectation. These men are known in art history as the
Mannerists and the men whose works they imitated were chiefly Raphael and Michelangelo. Large,
crowded compositions were produced with striking effects of light. Their elegance was affected,
their sentiment forced, their brilliancy superficial glitter.
As Mannerism faded, three artistic trends supplanted it: the so-called academic movement,
Baroque and Caravaggism. The eclectics sought to revive art by correcting the faults of the
mannerists. Contemporary with the eclectics sprang up theNeo- politan School of Naturalists led by
Caravaggio and his pupils. These schools opposed each other and yet influenced each other. The
baroque trend was to have a profound effect not only in Italy but throughout Europe as well. The
supreme exponent of the baroque movement outside Italy was Rubens, whose compositions were
immersed in a warm, heavy atmoshperewith billowing mantles, theatrical poses and violent
movement. While compositions laid out on the basis of straight lines were generally employed by
such classical painters as Raphael, interlocking curves were favoured by baroque artists seeking
movement and dynamic effects.
Caravaggio (1573—1610)
Few artists in history have exerted as extraordinary an influence as the tempestuous and short-
lived Caravaggio. He was destined to turn a large part of European art away from the ideal
viewpoint of the Renaissance to the concept that simple reality was of primary importance. The
difference lies between what an artist thinks is the proper way to show something, and what he
actually sees.
Caravaggio was one of the first to paint people as ordinary looking. Thus in “Death of the
Virgin”, he depicted the mother of Christ with unheard of realism, so that the painting was refused
by the church of Santa Maria della Scala in Rome.
In this picture the painter has caused the light to be thrown across these figures as though from
a spotlight. This theatrical device controls the illumination as it moves across the heads at the upper
left down to the right, where it brightens the face of the main character, the dead Virgin. With clever
planning, the faces about her are either in partial shadow or bent so that their features do not distract
from the artist’s main purpose. The main function of the light seems to be the creation of form in the
picture space. In spite of Caravaggio’s avowed dislike of the conventional art of his period, he
cannot help being a part of the expression of the time in his own way. In most baroque paintings,
there is a deliberate incompleteness; cut-off figures carry the eye out of the painting on all sides, and
back into it as well.
In most of Caravaggio’s paintings composition depends on the gestures of the figures and the
lighting, which is usually violent with spotlight effects. Colours are dark and sombre, hardly more
than monochromatic reds and browns. Later his palette darkened increasingly while his lighting
became still stronger and more contrasting.
Rubens (1577—1640)
Peter Paul Rubens, prince of baroque painters, was a skilful diplomat who at times was
entrusted with delicate peace missions between the Southern and Northern Netherlands and also
between Spain and England. During his trip to Italy in 1600, and prior to his return to Flanders in
1608, he made copies of the works of Titian and studied the sculpturesque painting of Michelangelo.
In this period he also produced some of his finest portraits at various princely Italian courts. He was
a versatile genius who rivals in inventive faculty the great mind of the Italian Renaissance. He was a
humanist and classical archaeologist, a sumptuous designer of religious, historical and allegorical
canvases and a supreme master in “pure” landscape.
Rubens was endlessly active. There are thousands of works from his hand, scattered through
collections and museums across the world. The paintings amount to more than three thousand; they
are often of large size, and most are entirely his own work.
Italian art continued to be the basis of his taste and manner for a long time, and reminiscences
of Caravaggio, Michelangelo and Titian are always present. Along this course he passed from the
most extreme dynamism to new images of serenity and calm, from the fieriest violence of
contrasting tones to atmospheric delicacy, almost anticipating the atmospheric refinements of the
eighteenth century. In his most original and spontaneous works Rubens was able to give his
impetuous brush free rein there is a perfection and completeness even in his impressionistic initial
drafts. As his creative talents developed, we notice growing vigour in his forms and a livelier and
brighter action.
Rubens was a great painter above all because of the charm of his colours, the softness of his
impasto and the luminosity of his flesh-tints. His works do not overwhelm the spirit or enter the-
soul by force and made it tremble; they strike us by the strength of their colour and the inexhaustible
and overwhelming dash and ardour of their brush-work. But only very occasionally can they really
тоуё us with total abandonment to sorrow.
The variety of his sources of inspiration manifests his classical culture, and his attention to the
Italian Renaissance. He depicted Ariosto’s sleeping Angelica surprised by the hermit (“Angelica and
the Hermit”, now in Vienna), or he turned to the remotest period of Roman history to paint idyllic
and charming scenes of country life, such as “Romulus and Remus” suckled by the she-wolf. The
sweet rounded forms of the blond babes, to which Rubens seems to have been drawn again and
again, bring us close to that world of happy childhood which he enters in his portraits of his own
children.
Look at his exquisite “Portrait of a Child”. Observe the way the hair, the eyes, the tip of the
nose and the mouth are drawn. Through the sure handling of these, Rubens has characterised the
individual features of his son, Nicholas, in a superb study for an Infant Christ. There is in the portrait
an absence of the classic restraint of the Renaissance. The details of the face are less sharply drawn
than if done by an Italian Renaissance master, We have, instead, something warmer, in the brilliant
rendering of the Child’s mood. With infinite serenity, Rubens toys with the curls and faces of his
babies, as in the “Garland of Fruit”, dating from 1614, where the rotund forms, the little noses and
mouths, the curls, hands and plump little feet are treated with the delicate grace of flowers and filled
with warm and vital colour.
Velasquez (1599—1660)
Diego Velasquez undoubtedly stood head and shoulders above his fellow painters of 17th
century Spain. This native of Seville first concentrated on still-lifes and tavern scenes, which were
cast in a strong Caravaggesque mould. Appointed court painter at the age of twenty-four by Philip
IV, he began an official career which was to last thirty-seven years. In 1628 he shared his Madrid
studio with Rubens and the influences stemming from this relationship can be seen from
Velasquez’s “Bacchus”, now in the Prado. Velasquez here tackled the Olympian ods for the first
time but he did so in a spirit very different from Titian or Rubens. He looked at the world of gods
with the same directness and freshness of vision which he had brought to the characters of the
people of the streets and markets in his Seville period. The work is better known as “The Topers”
than by its correct name. It shows a group of lively men in rags and shabby hats, elated with wine,
restricted and unsteady in the wavering movements of heads, hands and drinking-cups, their eyes
winking and sparkling, and with somewhat stupefied smiles on their faces. Close by them are the
semi-nude figures of Bacchus and his companions, their heads wreathed in vine leaves and bunches
of grapes.
Rubens also induced Velasquez to visit Italy and in 1629 he went to Rome. Later, in Venice,
he was to discover the work of Titian, who affected him more strongly than any other artist. Under
Titian’s liberating influence, Velasquez gradually abandoned the limited naturalism of his early
years for a lighter toned style of direct painting, notable for its discreet mastery of optical effects, its
subtle and beautiful colours, and its ability to convey an impartial sense of character. He specialised
in portraits, usually of the King and Spanish Court, but he also painted mythological scenes.
In the second period of his career which began when he returned to Madrid in 1631, Velasquez
produced sixty paintings, more or less half his entire work. Among them is one historical work,
“The Surrender at Breda”. The besieged fortress town of Breda in North Brabant surrendered to the
Spanish general Spin- ola after a staunch resistance of twelve months. The victorious general had
granted honourable terms to the captured garrison. The ceremony of the delivery of the keys is the
subject of Velasquez’s painting. The work was soon popularly renamed “The Lances”, because of
the verticals which seemed to express the peaceful halt of the army at the moment of surrender. It
has been considered the best historical work in West European painting. Velasquez makes the
distinction between the various physical types of Spaniards and Dutch with great perspicacity. The
land and sea of Holland is recognisable. The colours are rich and pure, though not blaring or
discordant, and blend together in the light midday air. The drawing is superlative, and the natural
ease of the two opposing generals, the sorrowful dignity of the loser and the courteous smile of the
victor, are extraordinary.
Whether he paints peasants or noblemen, clowns or infants, Velasquez is never the slave of his
subject, even in his historical pictures; he arranges his composition; he applies his colours to give
the required values; he places his figures or objects so as to create the space he has planned. There is
an air of certainty in his perfection; he is confident of being a master of technique, and everything
else — whether of sentimental or literary interest — is merely an adjunct.
Velasquez undertook the most diverse subjects with equal success; he approached domestic
interiors as seriously as historical scenes, portraits of peasants with as much respect as those of great
noblemen, and a simple still-life with as much exactness and care as a composition on a grand scale.
Velasquez stands in the impregnable position of a great master, his perfection sets him beyond
criticism.
John Constable was the first English landscape painter to ask no lessons from the Dutch. He
was born at East Bergholt on the Suffolk side of the river Stour. The beauty of the surrounding
scenery, its luxuriant meadows, its woods and rivers became the subject matter of his painting. It
was his desire not merely to paint “portraits of places” but to give a true and full impression of
nature, to paint light, dews, breezes, bloom and freshness.
Constable saw the lovely greens in nature and painted them as he saw them. To accomplish his
aim of rendering the living moving quality of nature he used broken touches of colour. On a
foundation of warm reddish monochrome he would build up the fresh blues and greens of nature, the
undivided spots of paint often laid on with a palette knife in the modern manner. The sparkles of
light and colour and the deliberate roughness of texture broke with the tradition of smooth painting.
Constable’s picture “The Hay Wain” which was exhibited at the Louvre in 1824, had an
immediate and lasting effect on French art. His pure and brilliant colour was a revelation to French
painting. Though he did not exclude dark tones from his palette, the greater depth and liveliness of
the colour scale opened a new horizon to landscape painters when Constable discovered the effects
of coloured patches placed densely side by side on the canvas.
It was Constable’s habit to make large preparatory sketches for his pictures of special
importance. There is a great difference between the sketches and the pictures painted in the studio.
The sketches were done directly from nature and they contain a freshness and vigour often lost in
the finished paintings while the pictures worked up in the studio possess a refinement of
composition not to be found in the sketches.
For example, in the sketch for “The Leaping Horse”, the bent willow is to the right of the horse
and its rider, as it doubtless was in the scene that Constable actually beheld; but in the picture of
“The Leaping Horse” in the Diploma Gallery of the Royal Academy the tree is shifted to the other
side of the horse and rider more to the left, in order to improve the design and emphasise the rhythm
of the diagonal accents from the big tree on ourь left to the water-weeds in the opposite lower
corner. He did not paint snapshots of nature; he understood the science of picturemaking as well as
any artist and while desirous above all of presenting the general truth of the scene before him, he did
not scruple to alter the position of one particular tree or other object, if thereby he could improve the
composition of the picture.
Turner’s first known watercolour was painted in 1787 and this marks the beginning of a long
career during which he produced a succession of masterpieces unequalled in range and power by
hardly any other British artist. The range of his subjects, although confined largely within the field
of landscape, and the vast sweep of his development from his first topographical drawings to his late
evocations of light and atmosphere, to say nothing of the intrinsic qualities of the works themselves,
proclaim him one of the greatest English painters.
One of Turner’s earliest paintings (“The Shipwreck”, 1805) shows his absorption with the sea,
and especially the sea as it affected ships. The drama of light is not yet the dominantone; as
composition it is anchored firmly in the two repeating bright triangles of the sails, although the tilt
of these, as if in counterpoint, speaks literally of disaster. In his narrative pictures his passion for
light and colour is also somewhat subdued (“Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus”, 1829, “Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage”, 1832). In “Grand Canal, Venice” (1835), the weight of the black gondola
seems less than that of its shadow, Venice is drowning, awash with light.
About the same time Turner also showed one of his several recordings of “The Burning of the
Houses of Parliament” (1834). The scene becomes an almost superhuman vision: what is left of the
world is no more than a reflection of fire; the twin towers of Westminster Abbey (on whose ghostly
uprights the composition holds together) seem to float in the flames and the far end of the bridge to
disintegrate into them. The painting, when first shown, mystified people but the impact was so
undeniable that it was accepted.
A critic wrote about it: “The execution of the picture is curious; to look at it close, it appears a
confused mass of daubs and streaks of colour. Turner seems to paint slovenly — daubing as one
would say; yet what other painter preserves equal clearness of colour?”
But a picture shown seven years later “The Snow Storm” (1842) which now seems one of his
most prophetic and original paintings was not so warmly greeted. Here he had gone a bit too far
ahead of his time for his generation to be able to accept his experiment, let alone understand and be
fired by it. “The Snow Storm”, though even to modern eyes not immediately obvious to read, is an
attempt to convey the material power, the blind, shoving weight of the flurries of snow, spray and
wave; furtherit is a curiously personal statement of triumph, of sheer survival.
In this, as in his other works (“Rain, Steam and Speed”, 1844, “The Fighting ‘Temeraire’ ”,
1838) we can see Turner’s realisation of an interplay between dark and light, warm and cold masses.
In his investigation of colour Ы anticipates in some degree the practice of the Impressionists; in
some late works when colour seems to become arbitrary in the sense that it is independent of the
forms it no longer describes, he anticipates sometimes the Fauves and more often certain of the
twentieth century purely abstract painters.
What is Impressionism?
If we look at the bottles in “A Bar at the Folies-Bergere” by Manet, we shall notice that the
treatment of detail here is totally different from the treatment of detail by the painters of the
Academy who looked at each leaf, flower and branch separately and set them down separately on
canvas like a sum in addition. But all the bottles in Manet’s picture are seen simultaneously in
relation to each other: it is a synthesis, not an addition. Impressionism then, in the first place, is the
result of simultaneous vision that sees a scene as a whole, as opposed to consecutive vision that sees
nature piece by piece. Let us suppose, for a moment, that we are staying at a house on the banks of
the Seine opposite the church at Vernon. Let us suppose that, having arrived there in darkness the
previous evening, we jump out of bed in the morning, open the window, and put out our head to see
the view. Monet’s picture “The Church at Vernon” shows us what we should see at the first glance;
the glance, that is to say, when we see the scene as a whole, before any detail in it has riveted our
attention and caused us unconsciously to alter the focus of our eye in order to see that detail more
sharply. Another way of putting the matter is to say that in an Impressionist picture there is only one
focus throughout, while in an academic picture there is a different focus for every detail. These two
methods of painting represent different ways of looking at the world, and neither way is wrong, only
whereas the academician look particularly at a series of objects, the Impressionist looks generally at
the whole.
The Science of Colour
This way of viewing a scene broadly, however, is only a part of Impressionism. It was not a
new invention, for Velasquez saw and painted figures and groups in a similar way, therefore
Impressionists like Whistler and Manet (in his earlier works) were in this respect developing an
existing tradition rather than inventing a new one.But a later development of Impressionism, which
was a complete innovation, was the new palette they adopted. From the time of Daubigny, who said,
“We never paint light enough”, the more progressive painters had striven to make the colours in
their pictures closer to the actual hues of nature. Delacroix was one of the pioneers in the analysis of
colour. When he was in Morocco he wrote in his journal about the shadows he had seen on the faces
of two peasant boys, remarking that while the sallow, yellow-faced boy had violet shadows, the red-
faced boy had green shadows. Again, in the streets of Paris Delacroix noticed a black and yellow
cab, and observed that, beside the greenish-yellow, the black took on a tinge of the complementary
colour, violet. Every colour has its complementary, that is to say, an opposing colour is evoked by
the action of the human eye after we have been gazing at the said colour; consequently all colours
act and react on one another. Delacroix discovered that to obtain the full brilliance of any given hue
it should be flanked and supported by its complementary colour. He did not attain to full knowledge;
it was left for a later generation to make nicer distinctions and to recognise that if violet is the right
complementary for a greenish-yellow, an orange-yellow requires a turquoise blue, and so on.
The nineteenth was a scientific century during which great additions were made to our
knowledge of optics. The French scientist Chevreuil wrote a learned book on colour, which was
studied with avidity by the younger painters. It became clear to them that colour was not a simple
but a very complex matter. For example, we say that grass is green, and green is the local colour of
grass, that is to say, the colour of grass at close range, when we look down on it at our feet. But
grass-covered hills seen at a great distance do not appear green, but blue. The green of their local
colour is affected by the veil of atmosphere through which we view it in the distance, and the blue
we see is an example of atmospheric colour. Again, the local colour of snow is white, but everybody
who has been to Switzerland is familiar with the “Alpine glow” when the snow-clad peaks of the
mountains appear a bright copper colour owing to the rays of the setting sun. This “Alpine glow” is
an example of illumination colour, and since the colour of sunlight is changing throughout the day,
everything in nature is affected by the colour of the light which falls upon it.
The landscape painter, then, who wishes to reproduce the actual hues of nature, has to consider
not only “local colour”, but also “atmospheric colour” and “illumination colour”, and further take
into consideration “complementary colours”. One of the most important discoveries made by the
later Impressionist painters was that in the shadows there always appears the complementary colour
of the light. We should ponder on all these things if we wish to realise the full significance of
Monet’s saying, “The principal person in a picture is light”.
The Impressionist Palette
This new intensive study of colour brought about a new palette and a new technique. For
centuries all painting had been based on three primary colours: red, blue and yellow, but science
now taught the painters that though these might be primary colours in pigment, they were not
primary colours in light. The spectroscope and the new science of spectrum-analysis made them
familiar with the fact that white light is composed of all the colours of the rainbow, which is the
spectrum of sunlight. They learnt that the primary colours of light were green, orange- red, blue-
violet, and that yellow — though a primary in paint was a secondary in light, because a yellow light
can be produced by blending a green light with an orange-red light. On the other hand green, a
secondary in paint because it can be produced by mixing yellow with blue pigment, is a primary in
light. These discoveries revolutionised their ideas about colour, and the Impressionist painters
concluded they could only hope to paint the true colour of sunlight by employing pigments which
matched the colours of which sunlight was composed, that is to say, the tints of the rainbow. They
discarded black altogether, for, modified by atmosphere and light, they held that a true black did not
exist in nature, the darkest colour was indigo, dark green, or a deep violet. They would not use a
brown, but set their palette with indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and violet, the nearest
colours they could obtain to the seven of the solar spectrum.
After travelling in Germany, Austria and Italy to study the Old Masters, Manet finally found in
the paintings by Velasquez and Goya at the Louvre the answer to all his questionings and aspirations
for light and truth. Influenced by these masters and by the example of Courbet, a French realist
painter, he gradually evolved a new technique which presented modern aspects by modern methods.
Observing how one colour melted into another in nature, he declared, “There are no lines in Nature”,
and in his pictures he abandoned the convention of the outline and shaped his forms by a modelling
obtained by subtle gradations of tints which fused into one another. The problem of just illumination
was to Manet a matter of primary importance. He built up his pictures by the direct application of
planes of colour rather than by working up an underpainting based on linear design and light and
shade, and he also chose his subjects from the life around him.
Manet’s painting aroused great controversy. He contributed a large canvas “Luncheon on the
Grass” to the Salon of 1863. We have an account of how the picture originated.
“One Sunday we were at Argenteuil stretched out on the river bank, watching the white yawls
furrowing the scene, and their light colours set in relief against the dark blue water. Women were
bathing. Manet had fixed his gaze on the skin of one coming out of the water. ‘It looks’ he said, ‘as
though I shall have to paint a nude. Well then, so I will. When we were at the studio, I copied
Giorgione’s women, the women with the musician. That painting was dark. The backgrounds are
pushed to one side. I'm going to repain t this and do it in a transparent atmosphere with characters
like those over there. The critics will savage me, but they can say what they like.” Manet painted
two versions, one four feet wide and a large one, nearly nine feet wide, destined for the Salon. The
composition is the same, but the smaller of the two is more luminous, the landscape more airy, the
execution more spontaneous with its contrasting, unsoftened light and the nude fashioned without
the traditional modelling, only from splashes of shadow. Having learned from the reception given to
his “Musique aux Tuileries” Manet probably tried — in the larger painting — to soften the harsh
effects of contrast that shocked the public. But by doing so he partially killed the luminous life of his
composition the elements of which no longer amalgamate having lost their sole factor of unity. The
figures no longer, as in the sketch, integrate with the landscape and their grouping seems artificial
and their positions fixed.
Because of the picture’s subject, a modernisation of a Renaissance theme, and Manet’s new
sketchy technique, it caused an unprecedented scandal. Why was it such a shock to the public?
Simply, because those passages in full light, and those in shadow, instead of passing very gradually
one into the other, were sharply contrasted; hence the picture's crude, harsh look.
Manet’s most important work of 1866 is “The Fifer.” The picture was built up in three stages
with a sureness and quickness of hand which no other artist has ever surpassed. As a student Manet
had been taught to prepare a picture in monochrome. Now he rejected such leading-strings. He
painted straight on to the canvas which had been given a ground of unified colour. Light and shade
were arrived at by the most economical means. To the face, and the flesh tones he gave a wonderful
living texture, first establishing them by means of a middle tone, then laying in the shadows, and
then finally adding the highlights. He mixed his colours very little. Seen from close up, the red bree-
ches seem all one tone, like a lacquer. But a few touches of black, hardly visible when one is
looking at the canvas from close up to serve as soon as one gets away from it, to give splendid
modelling to the coarse uniform cloth.
The artist became the pioneer of the new generation of painters, who were going even beyond
Courbet’s realism in their attempt to record not their knowledge of the subject but their visual
conceptions of it. Manet’s paintings met their demands: forms are suggested by the juxtaposition of
broad strokes of colours instead of definite contours. His canvases depicting topical themes and
painted in smooth, even colours made Manet an innovator of the new art.
Monet was the most convinced and consistent Impressionist of them all. From his earliest days
as an artist, he was encouraged to trust his perceptions and the hardships he suffered never deterred
him from that pursuit.
Devoting himself to the painting of landscapes in bright sunlight, he has carried the pitch of
painting into a higher key than any artist before him had done. “Pine Trees at Antibes” is a beautiful
example of his style at its maturity; radiant colours are laid side by side in small broken touches to
suggest the vibration of light, while the decorative arrangement shows Japanese influence.
Light is always the “principal person” in Monet’s landscape, and since he is always aiming at
seizing a fugitive effect, he has insisted on consistency of illumination at particular hours of the day
and season. With this object he adopted since the early eighties a habit of painting the same subject
under different conditions of light. In this way he painted a series of views, all of the same subject,
but all different in colour and lighting.
His aim was to give a serial, continuous impression of the most minute transformations of
light; by de-emphasising the subject matter through repetition, he felt he could more readily control
the variable of light. In some of these motifs he lost the freshness of his early work and became
overemphatic and monotonous.
In 1890 Monet bought the property at Giverny and began work on the series of haystacks
which he pursued for two years. Monet painted the stacks in sunny and grey weather, in fog and
covered with snow.
Though it is one of the simplest versions, “Haystack” magnificently exemplifies Monet’s
struggle to capture the transient splendor of light. The hill, trees, houses, and fields, as passive in
local colour as the piled hay, are bathed in unnameable nuances of colour that radiate from behind
the stack. The contour of its peak, dissolved in a heated aura, writhes as if it were about to melt.
Monet’s renowned series of the cathedral at Rouen seen under different light effects was
painted from a second-floor window above a shop opposite the facade. He made eighteen frontal
views. Changing canvases with the light, Monet had followed the hours of the day from early
morning with the facade in misty blue shadow, to the afternoon, when it is flooded with sun, and
finally to the end of the day, when the sunset, disappearing behind the buildings of the city, weaves
the weathered stone work into a strange fabric of burnt orange and blue.
Monet poetically demonstrated, as motion and colour photography were to prove, that nature’s
colour lies in atmosphere and constantly changing light rather than in inert materials; that during a
short time the appearance of a single substance can moderate through the entire spectral and tonal
range.
His lily pad motifs, where close-valued, but lower-keyed colour is enhanced by a loose and
fluent brush-work, today assume power and originality.
During his last years, Monet expanded on the theme of the water-lilies, using an informal
pointillistic style. He was the leader cf the Impressionist School, a painter of twinkling light and
luminous colour; his sensitive eye brought the representation of colour gradations in the landscape
to an unequalled height.
Renoir was born at Limoges, and at the age of thirteen began to earn his living as a painter on
porcelain. This early apprenticeship left a certain trace on his art which was always decorative in
spite of its later realism. In time Renoir saved up enough money to go to Paris and became a pupil of
Gleyre in whose studio he met Sisley and Monet. Working together in 1868—1869, Monet and
Renoir made some paintings at a riverside restaurant near Paris when they were forced, in their
treatment of light and colour reflected in the water and over the figures, to break up the paint texture
in sketchy touches and use brighter hues.
Renoir participated in the 1876 exhibition of the Impressionists with a series of canvases in
which the light playing over the bright clothes of the figures is the main feature. Even the shadows
in these paintings are full of colour, and the painting as a whole becomes a shimmering and
quivering surface.
Throughout his Impressionist period that is from 1872—1883, Renoir practised a variety of
techniques, putting on his colour now in thick, squashing strokes, now in thin layers, now in distinct,
separate touches, now in smooth strokes that melted into one another.
It was not unusual for Renoir to switch from one technique to another in the same picture as in
“The Path Winding up through Tall Grass”. Only the grass in the foreground is painted in thick,
vigorous comma-like brush strokes, while the middle distance and the background glide away in
thin, flat patches of colours merging into one another.
In his compositions of 1875 and 1876 he comes to use the human figure in a very original
fashion, like a subject that is part of a landscape, on which light may play with greater richness and
fantasy. In a sort of bluish half darkness, the light appears in the form of large round patches, a little
pink, placed indifferently on faces and clothing and creating a phantasmagoria of colours, par-
ticularly on charming dresses with their bustles ornamented with stripes and ribbons. In this spirit he
produces “The Swing” and the great composition of the “Moulin de la Galette”, one of the finest,
most smiling of his masterpieces. It is like a marvellous tissue of interwoven sunlight and soft hazy
blue. In foregoing the small separate touches he used for so many landscapes and open- air scenes at
this period, he painted with criss-crossing brush strokes, laid on in thin, successive layers and
melting into one another, which repeated form and volume, while at the same time rendering the
luminous atmosphere bathing the figures.
“The Portrait of Jeanne Samary” may well be the most impressionist of Renoir’s portraits.
With no hint of shadows or darkness anywhere, with little or no variation in values, the whole
canvas is a quilt of tiny quivering touches alive with light and a gemlike sparkle. The sitter in this
work was Jeanne Samary, an actress at the Comedie Fran?aise who had the natural charm and
beauty that Renoir required in his models, as well as a luminous complexion so that, in the artist’s
words “she seemed to radiate a light from within”.
Outings in the country and boating on the river were themes that never failed to inspire the
Impressionist painters. After the pleasure garden of the “Moulin de la Galette”, Renoir painted here
the sunny animated atmosphere of a riverside restaurant on the Seine, just outside of Paris. Now he
tried his hand at special effects of light filtering through an awning, and superbly evoked the beauty
of a summer day out of doors. Nor did he ever succeed better than here in individualising his
figures, recording their every movement and attitude. “Luncheon of the Boating Party” is certainly
one of Renoir’s finest canvases. There are however several passages that may strike us as being a
trifle dry. The light, on the other hand, is beyond all praise, playing beautifully over the young
woman holding a puppy in the left foreground —none other than Aline Charigot soon to become
Renoir’s wife — and the still life on the table, the leftovers of the picnic lunch. The girl in the
center, lolling on the railing, outlined against the landscape is again Renoir at his best. But we get a
dissonant note in the lower right hand corner of the canvas, particularly in the man straddling the
chair, with his hat rakishly back, who is handled more dryly than the rest, and seen in a harsher light.
Later on in his career, Renoir abandoned the Impressionist technique of painting with sketchy
touches of thick paint, and defined his forms with layers of thin, transparent glazes that gave his
tones a deep inner glow rather than a surface sparkle.
Edgar Degas was closely associated with the Impressionists and even participated in seven out
of eight exhibits held by the group. He shared their taste for light colours and a spot technique, but
rarely if ever worked out of doors, believing that artistic creation lay within the imagination ox at
least in the memory of an experience. From the very beginning of the Impressionist movement,
Degas insisted on using the term “independent” painter to distinguish himself from the other
painters.
In his paintings, space and figures are integrated with almost too great a diligence; the rooms
are perfectly constructed in perspective, the human body is analysed ruthlessly, every part fitting
together, the gestures and poses are carefully balanced, and the juxtaposition meaningful.
Degas became interested in dancers at the dancing classes of the Opera, in the movements and
poses he could explore in their various steps and positions. Each painting occasioned an extensive
series of studies. In fact he watched the dancers not only when they were at the bar, or resting , but
every moment of their long hours of practice, weariness and rest: when they were paying attention to
their master’s criticism, and when they were at ease, when they stretched, yawned or adjusted their
costumes.
The paintings of horses and race-courses touched on the same problems as the paintings of
dancers. Degas gave a true rendering of the dynamic movement and the superb lines of the limbs.
The jockeys’ colours and the carriages of the spectators served as foils for the horses, in a space cut
by diagonals and by increasingly bolder asymmetrical openings. The composition is strictly
balanced as a harmonious whole, with an illusion of a development in time confined in a limited
space.
Degas’ ability to grasp and convey the crucial moment in a scene of swift movement remains
unparalleled and is apparent in all his paintings, even in those late works in which he invests new
themes (a Woman drying her hair or ironing clothes) with a monumental grandeur of composition.
Degas like Monet, loved to return again and again to the same subject, in endless variations of
handling and viewpoint, creating an extraordinary relationship between the exploration of the
subject and the use of the imagination and memory.
A superb example of his later style is the pastel “A Dancer on the Stage”, which gives a
wonderful impression of a ballet- dancer almost floating into the brilliant light of the stage from the
obscurity of the “wings”. It is miraculous in its suggestion of quivering movement.
He tried new approaches in his later years; the dancers were no longer studied in poses taken
from actuality or captured in the spectacular moment of the arabesque. The dancers break forward
into the foreground, almost bursting out of the picture space and are brought together from a
distance scarcely held within the range of the spectator. Their “tutus” are fringed with flashes of
colour which vividly demonstrate the rotation of the figure.
Technically Degas was faced with a conflict between his linear tendencies and an impressionist
feeling for brilliant, dissolving colour. Pastel became his exclusive and most suitable medium. With
coloured chalks he was able to draw in a linear manner and give colour to his figures at the same
time. This solution enabled him to keep the forms solid and to make them move, two elements often
lacking in orthodox outdoor Impressionism.
Auguste Rodin achieved the greatest fame won by any sculptor since Michelangelo. He was of
humble origin and in his youth had to earn his living working in a mason’s yard, where he became
familiar with the material he was destined to master.
His most significant early work was “The Man with the Broken Nose”. Rodin spoke of it later
as “the first good piece of modelling'' he ever did. In this work the features, battered by
time and experience, show that Rodin, perhaps unconsciously was already fascinated by the
torments and problems which haunt human beings.
The development of Rodin’s style was greatly influenced by Michelangelo. In a letter to his
pupil he pointed out: “Michelangelo liberated me from academic methods”. Michelangelo had made
the body the centre of his art, in his paintings no less than in his sculpture. With Michelangelo it is
the body which expresses the emotions — and the emotions are rendered by means of physical
manipulation, to achieve his ends he twisted the human form almost to the limit-, the grandiose
elements in Michelangelo’s work were intoxicating to many sculptors. For Rodin, too, the gigantic
and the horrific formed a natural part of his vision.
Today it is Rodin’s modelling, his ability to twist his material in any way he wished and his
use of this for expressive purposes which mainly excite us.
In 1880 Rodin received his first major commission —“The Gates of Hell”. His task was to
design a decoration on a theme from Dante's “The Divine Comedy” for the doorway of the proposed
Decorative Arts Museum. He agreed to finish it by 1884, but this project was to engage him almost
until the end of his life.
Above the doors in “The Gates of Hell” a nude n^ale figure sits with his chin resting on his
hand contemplating the fearful scene below. On top of the doors three nude figures stand with their
heads lowered and right hands pointing downward as if unable to resist the force which pulled them
into hell.
As Rodin worked on the groups of figures which he had subtracted from “The Ga!ei”, each
became a separate piece of sculpture. In 1889 Rodin exhibited the groups of figures at a Paris
gallery. The public was enthusiastic. The titles of the statues had no relation to “The Gates of Hell”,
Paolo and Francesca were no longer the tortured lovers described by Dante. This pair embracing
tenderly was named “The Kiss”. The three figures pointing downward were “The Shades”, and the
seated man, pondering tensely, was called “The Thinker”. “The Thinker thinks not only with his
brain,” wrote Rodin, “but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and
gripping toes.”
“The Gates of Hell” was never finished. Bronze and marble casts were made from the plaster
figures and were sold to museums in Europe and America.
What characterizes Rodin’s work most is the extraordinary vitality of his images, the bounding
movement and virtuosity of gesture. It was his determination to make modelling as expressive as
possible which imparts to his improvisations their brilliance and fire. He was also a radical organiser
of space.
Rodin taught his contemporaries that distinction in sculpture is obtained not by selecting a
certain type of figure, but by the gift and art of modelling.Rodin introduced impressionism into
sculpture, showing us heads and figures as they appeared to the human eye enveloped in atmosphere
and bathed in light. His famous monument “The Citizens of Calais” is remarkable, not only for the
poignant expression of the different characters of the various figures, but also for the truth of atmos-
phere and movement in this procession winding its way along slowly and sadly.
The rugged technique by which Rodin obtained his wonderful effects of atmospheric reality
was long in establishing itself in public favour, yet there have been few sculptors animated with a
more profound respect for the material of their art. It was Rodin’s love of marble itself which led to
a new development of his art, in which he would leave rough the matrix from which his sculpture
was hewn, so that delicate heads and figures seemed to grow like flowers out of the marble of their
origin. A memorable example of his work in this style is “Thought” in which a feminine head of
exquisite refinement and spirituality emerges from a rough-hewn block of marble.
Rodin reached his extreme limit of impressionism in sculpture with his colossal statue of
“Balzac”. The sublime simplicity of this figure loosely wrapped in a dressing-gown with the
upturned face, the lion-maned head of genius, soaring, as it were, to heaven, revealed Rodin at his
highest not only as a master of impressionist modelling, but also as a psychologist who could
conceive and create an unforgettable expression of the very soul of genius.
Cezanne’s art marks a conscious effort to return to painting the kind of controlled form and
space it had not known since the Old Masters. In the strenuousness of his attempts he tended to treat
his themes more as arrangements of form, colour, and texture than as subjects with emotional
meaning. The subject matter chosen by the artist had almost always been a direct reflection of his
feelings. With Cezanne all this changed; he devoted his life to technique. He tried to make of
Impressionism “something as solid and durable as the art of the museums” and neglected the overtly
emotional side of painting.
A member of the original Impressionist group, Cezanne soon separated from them. He avoided
the atmospheric effects of his associates in favour of a more carefully constructed and arranged
composition. Although he used their little spots of clean colour, he applied these in such a way that
they modulate the form from highlight to shadow. He felt also that the richer the colour the more
rounded thg ultimate form effect would be. Cezanne’s most significant contribution, however, came
in his treatment of space. In order to get tighter composition, he gradually limited the degree to
which the spectator could penetrate the distance. To achieve this, he brought the background as
close to the foreground as possible, projecting the forms toward the spectator rather than away from
him.
In “The Card Players” each figure is a solid form consisting of clean colour areas that move
from one intensity to another. The card players are blended into a solid arch balanced by the man at
the left and the curtain at the right. The standing man and the curtain, like the pipes on the wall and
the converging glances of the players, lead to a central point in the foreground. This reverses the
usual front-to-back movement of earlier painting. The total effect is to bring the wall close to the
table and to move the table itself toward us. This illusion is aided by making the side players touch
the upright figure and the curtain, as well as the sides of the picture. Everything is related to the
rectangular, front outline of the painting. Yet a picture of this kind, though formal in purpose, is not
without emotional meaning. It has a certain seriousness and solemn quietness.
The difference between Cezanne’s approach and the outdoor Impressionists’ is even more
striking in landscape painting. “Mt. Ste. Victoire” againshows his ability to organise a theme into a
series of controlled and definitely limited elements. The trees at the left and right not only establish
the foreground boundaries of the picture, they also relate this foreground area to the mountains in
the background. Note, for example, how the branches of the tree fit into the curves made by the
mountains. Thus the background and the painting as a whole are tilted forward and brought into
close relationship with the foreground.
AMERICAN ART