The above perception of the insanity of life is not at all apparent in the second painting of Georges Seurat. While it is mystical, it gives too much quiescence that is there with the impressionistic style. This like Picasso's painting above is a happy trip and does not exhibit as much negative energy as Picasso. He also does not seem to be trying to summon any primitive energies. Rather Seurat's painting is very urban. He is obviously a product of a new city, with new sidewalks, parks and a newly affluent city where nature had been tamed, including the monkeys on the leash. While it may seem that the monkeys are almost a Darwian joke, it does seem to be in the same as the dog on the leash of the lady with the umbrella. The dog and the monkey almost seem to expensive accessories like a handbag that has….

Art History: The Impressionists
Baroque

The word baroque has no clear origin. Some says that it came from a medieval philosophical word connoting the strange or the ridiculous, some consider it as derived from the Spanish barueco or Portuguese referring to an irregular shaped pearl. As 18th century was coming to an end baroque find its way to art criticism terminology in form of epithet leveled against art of the 17th century, though it later faced criticism that it was too strange or bizarre to merit serious study. Some of the baroque images can be viewed through this link, http://loki.stockton.edu/~fergusoc/lesson7/lect7.htm

Jakob Burckhardt among other 19th century Swiss cultural historian had a view that baroque was the decadent end of the enaissance, and so was his student Heinrich who identified the essential differences between the art of 16th and 17th century describing baroque as a fully distinct art but not a decline or a….

His paintings were and are provocative because, instead of using personal confessions (like Dali), he uses irony and wit and intelligence to make his point hear. "The Treason of Images" is controversial in the sense that it makes the viewer question art and language and the meaning that we apply to objects. Magritte questions the assumptions made by people about the world, changing the scale of objects and defying the laws of gravity
Picasso, Dali and Magritte were all controversial artists of the early 1920s who expressed their fears, their guilt and fantasies as well as their question through their works of art. All of the artists had a major influence on other artists to come as well as a major impact on society during that time. hile some may have considered these artists a threat to society, their works express a heightened sense of reality and an awareness.

Surrealism, expressionism….

Art History
The clouds gleamed gloriously, as if they were smiling to greet newcomers to heaven Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti. The two artists sat rather impatiently in the heavenly waiting room, and they refused to pick up any of the literature that lay strewn on the gilded coffee table before them.

This is ridiculous," grumbled Leonardo, who in spite of his age lacked no luster in his eyes. "I am not accustomed to waiting for so long. Indeed, I myself made the King of France, Francis the First, to wait for me. Now, if I am able to keep a mighty monarch..."

Indeed," interrupted Michelangelo. "If you were able to keep the mighty King of France waiting for you, why indeed should you not have to wait at heaven's gate. hosoever can know the timetable of the angels?"

The angels keep perfect time, I am sure," replied Leonardo, rolling his eyes. "They….

Art History
The transition from the Baroque to the Rococo style in sculpture and painting was attended by a concurrent shift in European power relations, as the cultural and political hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church gave way to secular institutions of power. Comparing a work produced during the height of either style demonstrates this shift implicitly, because the Rococo style contains a playfulness in both theme and visual content hinting that its intended audience and patron were far less concerned with grandeur and religious imagery than they might have been a century before, during the Baroque era. Furthermore, comparing and contrasting Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa with Jean-Honore Fragonard's The Swing will make this implicit cultural shift stand out more dramatically, because although both works include some of the same stylistic features that link the Baroque and Rococo, the playful, almost deliberately blasphemous thematic and literal content of….

Art History Of the Western World
Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, also known as La Giconda, is one of the most well-known paintings of the High Renaissance period. Painted between 1503-1506, it was done with oil paints on wood. Part of the reason it has so haunted people is because of Da Vinci's unique ability to capture expressions and facial subtleties that are lost in works by other artists. Da Vinci used a combination of idealizing and humanizing his subjects that gave them a realistic and surrealistic feel. The Mona Lisa has so many feelings expressed in the face that her smile has become legendary in and of itself for being completely mysterious. There are rumors that Da Vinci hired clowns and singers and other performers to amuse the model for his Mona Lisa so that she would enjoy her time posing for him, which is one theory as to why….

Art History Of the Western World
Raphael's Madonna of the Meadow is from the High Renaissance period, which lasted from the 14th Century to the 16th Century. The Italian term "Madonna" is a medieval term for a noble or important woman, but in Western art it has come to specifically refer to work that depicts the Virgin Mother Mary. iblical subjects such as the Madonna were very important to Renaissance painters and other artists. Other subjects of importance were the Holy Family and the Passion of the Christ. Raphael was very much creating exemplary work of the Renaissance period -- other Renaissance artists such as Da Vinci and Michaelangelo have also become renown for their depictions of the Madonna. Two of the most popular moments in the life of the Virgin Mary that were chosen for depiction in Madonna art were the Virgin with the Child, and the Pieta.

During his Florentine….

Art History - High Renaissance
The contextual knowledge of the era of High Renaissance and Mannerism is important as its integral to any study of work emerging from the period. The Renaissance movement took place in Europe from the early 14th to late 16th century, which witnessed a revival of interest in the values and artistic styles of classical antiquity especially in Italy. Early in the movement, the concept of Renaissance or revival emerged as a consequence of contemporary efforts in the period to imitate the poetic and painting styles of the ancient Greeks and Romans. ut as the movement progressed the word Renaissance came to represent a distinctive cultural and intellectual movement characterized by the growth of secular values and the rise of scientific and geographical exploration of the natural world. While Early Renaissance artists sought to create art forms consistent with the appearance of the natural world and with….

Art History -- High Renaissance
raphael, da vinci & MICHELANGELO:

THE SUPREME MASTERS OF THE HIGH RENAISSANCE

Within a thirty year span, beginning approximately in 1495, the city of Rome replaced Florence as the Italian seat of artistic pre-eminence. A series of powerful and ambitious popes, most notably Julius II and those associated with the rich and powerful De Medici family run by Cosimo De Medici and later on by Lorenzo De Medici, created a new papal state with Rome as its capitol and artistic center of Europe. These popes embellished Rome with great works of art and invited artists from all over Italy to take on some very challenging tasks. In its duration, the "High Renaissance" (ca. 1492 to 1520) produced works of such authority and magnitude that later generations of artists were forced to imitate it in order to compete with the growing competition within Italy and northern Europe. The various….

Art History
The 'Self' Concept in Abstract Expressionism Movement

Throughout many years, movements concerning approaches on different works of art often reflect principles that appeal to the utility and social function of artworks, which is the primary characteristic of Socialist art movement. Moreover, Cubism as an art movement subsists to creating ambiguous sense of space and use of geometric shapes to flatten the objects and subjects of the painting. Figures, objects, and subjects are broken into fragments and are overlapped with each other.

These are examples of important movements in art history that, somehow, deal with artworks as creations or products of an individual's conscious being, since these artworks have specific interpretations, functions, and purposes. But what if artworks cannot be easily interpreted, and have no specific functions and purposes?

The above-mentioned characteristics are illustrated in artworks created through the Abstract Expressionism movement. In this movement, there is a spontaneous assertion of feelings of….

Art History
War Imagery in Ancient and Contemporary Art

Considering the backdrop of politics and war is an important part of understanding ancient and contemporary art (Stockstad, 2003, p. 468). Historians can tell a lot about the actual events and feelings that occurred during wartime by looking at the rat of the time.

As the twentieth century dawned, many European and Americans had an optimistic outlook on life, believing that human society would advance through the spread of democracy, capitalism and technological change. Thus, during this time, artwork was relatively positive and upbeat. However, the competitive nature of both colonialism and capitalism created greater instability in Europe, and countries banded together in rival political alliances.

World War I started in 1914, pitting ritain, France and Russia against Germany and Austria. War imagery was created by many artists and often was used as propaganda. The United States entered in 1917 and contributed to an Allied….

Their uneven edges contrast with the stark, sharp, straight lines of the canvas itself. Correspondingly, Rothko uses the canvas to its maximum space, extending the blue background all the way to the edges. The blue is neither bright nor dull; it is a calm blue like the one that just follows dusk or precedes dawn. Such a naturalistic blue matches the earthy red and green used for the rectangles.
Furthermore, Rothko uses some shadow and nuance, creating slightly darker blue lines around the rectangles. The red rectangle floats above the green one. The green rectangle can be experienced as a giant field of grass, or as a forest scene from a distance. Like the blue field in the background, the green is not a solid block of color. There are nuances and shades within the green. Likewise, the red appears darker in some spots than in others, especially around the….

The dress is refined, but oversized and ill-fitting as befits a young boy. Here too, an Americanism is no doubt being added. Rather than make Henry Pelham appear too formal, as the scion of some great house in a European portrait, Copley reminds us that his subject is quite young and probably wearing hand-me-downs, or else some cost-saving garment into which he will eventually grow. It is a budding American disregard for class - a break with both the limners and the European masters. Copley's half-brother is both a young man of a good family and of a certain standing in society, and also any boy of the same age and similar means. In many ways, Henry Pelham comes across as a typical schoolboy. The way he holds string in his hand makes it appear like a pencil or pen that he is absent-mindedly twirling in his fingers as….

Art History
The Functions and Dysfunctions Mass Media advertising and Elitist vs. Popular Art in John Berger's "ays of Seeing"

The emergence of the Industrial Revolution gave birth to numerous movements that influenced contemporary culture and society at the turn of 20th century. The increase in production and distribution of goods and services, and the production of surplus of these goods and services gave birth to advertising. Consequently, advertising, in order to attract and entice consumers to buy their products or subsist to their services, came up with creative concepts on advertising their products and services -- through art and the mass media. Thus, popular culture was created, where mass communicated media messages are extended to consumers in visual, audio, print, and, nowadays, in multimedia forms.

Advertising is an essential factor that propagates two interrelated elements in today's capitalist world: popular culture and consumption. These two are interrelated because what is included in….

Art History
Marxism: Principal Ideology in Russian Constructivism and Mexican Mural Movement

In the history or political philosophy, Karl Marx has revolutionized the social structure of the society by introducing in his discourse, The Communist Manifesto, the concept of modern Socialism, more popularly called as Socialism. In his discourse, Marx posits that in the course of human history, there is the ongoing struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor, which he termed the proletariat and bourgeois societies, respectively. Marx argues that this continued oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeois class will eventually lead to social revolution, where the proletariats will be the new dominant social class, and social order is ruled by the proletariats. A distinct characteristic of Marx's concept of socialism is that it promotes state ownership, control of means of production and distribution, and reconstruction of the capitalist and other political systems through peaceful and democratic means.

Through Marx's discourse….