Transcript Olympia - Brian Schrank

The Breakdown of Perspectival Space
(and the rise of Self-Reflexivity in Modern Art)
Medieval
500 -1300
Renaissance
1300 -1600
Modernism
1850 -1960
Surface
Depth
Surface
Early Renaissance
Early
Renaissance
The Annunciation,
Fra Carnevale (1448)
Early Renaissance
Flagellation of Christ, Piero Della Francesca (1450)
The Ideal City
Early
Renaissance
People slowly
become more
“Naturally” depicted
in that space.
Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, Jan Van Eyck (1435)
More “Naturally” depicted.
Early
Renaissance
The Arnolfini Portrait,
Jan Van Eyck (1434)
Early
Renaissance
The Arnolfini Portrait,
Jan Van Eyck (1434)
Renaissance
Renaissance
Bodies eventually get fleshed out.
Renaissance
High level of
articulated
detail.
Vanitas/ Still-Life, Pieter Claeszoon (1630)
Renaissance
High level of
articulated
detail.
Vanitas/ Still-Life, Pieter Claeszoon (1630)
Renaissance
High level of
articulated
detail.
Vanitas/ Still-Life, Pieter Claeszoon (1630)
Medieval
500 -1300
Renaissance
1300 -1600
Modernism
1850 -1960
Surface
Depth
Surface
Renaissance
1300 -1600
Modernism
1850 -1960
Rococo
Renaissance
1300 -1600
Modernism
1850 -1960
Symbolism
Renaissance
1300 -1600
Modernism
1850 -1960
Romanticism
Early Modernism
Early Modernism
•Two Planes
•Theatrically
Staged
Oath of the Horatii, Jacques-Louis David (1784)
Early Modernism
•Foreground
No background
Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David (1784)
Early Modernism
•Pile of People
Blobby forms
Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault, (1818–1819)
Early Modernism
Orphan Girl at the Cemetery, Delacroix (1824)
Early Modernism
•Hyperrealism
Large Eyes
Color
Early
Modernism
Massacre at Chios,
Eugène Delacroix
(1824)
Early
EarlyModernism
Modernism
•Too Real, Harsh
“Attack on Art”
Oath
of theatHoratii,
(1824) (1824)
Massacre
Chios,Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Early Modernism
•Surface Emphasis
Pre-Impressionism
The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to
be broken J. M. W. Turner (1838)
Early Modernism
•Surface Emphasis
Pre-Impressionism
The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to
be broken J. M. W. Turner (1838)
Modernism
Modernism
The Luncheon on the Grass, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
Modernism
• Nude & dressed men (in
contemporary setting)
• Combination of Genres
– still life, landscape, nude,
portraiture
• Background figure too large
The Luncheon on the Grass,• Édouard
Nude is Manet
washed(1863)
out
Modernism
Modernism
In 1863 Painting with a
capital “P” was born.
The Luncheon on the Grass, Édouard Manet (1863)
It was now a Medium.
Modernism
• Never prior to Manet had the breach between
the taste of the public and changing types of
beauty—which art continually renews—been so
conclusively final. With Manet began the days of
wrath, of those outbursts of scorn and derision
with which, ever since, the public has greeted
each successive rejuvenation of beauty.
—George Bataille
Modernism
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Reference Venus
de Urbino
• Contemporary
prostitute slippers
• Washed out skin
• Look “matter of
factly” at viewer
• Cold, strong,
young, prostitute
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• The laughter that lay in wait for Olympia was
something unprecedented; here was the first
masterpiece before which the crowd fairly lost all
control of itself.
—George Bataille
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Jean Ravenel, art critic, “What on earth is
this yellow-bellied odalisque, this wretched
model picked up God knows where and
pawned off as representing Olympia?”
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Paul de Saint-Victor, art critic, “The crowd
gathers round Monsieur Manet's highly
spiced Olympia as it would round a body
at the morgue.”
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Painters, and especially Édouard Manet, who is
an analytic painter, do not share the masses'
obsession with the subject: to them, the subject
is only a pretext to paint, whereas for the
masses only the subject exists.
— Emile Zola, 1867
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Her real nudity (not merely that of her body) is
the silence that emanates from her, like that from
a sunken ship. All we have is the “sacred horror”
of her presence .
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Her real nudity (not merely that of her body) is
the silence that emanates from her, like that from
a sunken ship. All we have is the “sacred horror”
of her presence—presence whose sheer
simplicity is tantamount to absence. Her harsh
realism—which, for the Salon public, was no
more than a gorilla-like ugliness—is inseparable
from the concern Manet had to reduce what he
saw to the mute and utter simplicity of what was
there.
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Viewer is
propositioning
barmaid
• Bored,
resigned
expression
• Snap-shot-like
composition
(feet in corner)
• Impossible
mirror image
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Édouard Manet (1881-2)
Modernism
• Manet, from the very start, had put the image of man on
the same footing as that of roses or buns.
• —George Bataille
Arcadia
(a videogame that combines genres)
• Created by Gamelab at MIT
• http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/arcadia.jsp