Art History Part 3 Flashcards
Sculpture
The are of carving, casting, modeling, or assembling materials into 3D figures or forms
Sculpture has no need to serve a practical or functional purpose. Can be functional, but does not have to be.
Relief sculptures
The 3D forms are raised from a flat background
- Low relief (Bas-relief) - the forms project only slightly from the background.
- High relief - figures project by at least half their natural depth
Freestanding sculptures
Have fronts, sides, back, and tops. Invite the viewer to walk around them. Interactive
Subtractive process
Unwanted Material
- Carving - sculptor begins with a block of material and cuts portions of it away until the desired form is created.
- “The Cross-Legged Captive
- Michelangelo - 1530-1534
- Figure partly embedded in marble: tension
- Believed that he was liberating forms that already existed within the block of material
- The form is from a series of unfinished sculptures that the artist was making for an enormous tomb for Pope Julius II
- This is a great example of the number on problem Michelangelo had completing his commissions.
- The tomb was finished, but not nearly as large or boastful than Michelangelo’s initial program
- Works like these, however, give us a wonderful opportunity to explore the textures, his techniques, his approach, the type of tools.
Additive Process
- Modeling - pliable material such as clay or wax is shaped into a 3D form.
- Casting - a liquid material is poured into a mold, which hardens.
- Constructed Sculpture - forms built from materials such as wood, paper and string, sheet metal, and wire.
Mold
A pattern or matrix for giving form to molten or plastic material.
Lost-Wax technique
An original model is sculpted from clay, and a mold of it is made, usually from sectioned plaster or flexible gelatin. Molten wax is then brushed or poured into the mold to make a hollow wax model.
Investiture
A fire-resistant mold used in fire casting.
- “The Little Dancer, 14 Years Old”
- Edgar Degas - 1880-1881
- Painted wax figure startle the public and critics alike with its realism
- Degas grew blind as he grew older, so went from painting to sculpting - sense of touch
- With one exception, however, his wax and clay experiments were left crumbling in his studio, or disregarded
- The intact figures were cast as limited editions of bronze sculptures after his death
- The exception is this sculpture you see here
- He showed this piece as a wax model at the 1882 Impressionist exhibition and then later cast in bronze
- This small wax figure stirred the crowed for its realism was quite innovative - the hair, satin ribbon, the canvas bodice, the tulle skirt
Qualities of Stone sculptures
Extremely hard and durable material
Tools: Chisel, mallet, and rasp: rough file that has raised points instead of ridges.
- “Eyes”
- Louise Bourgeois - 1982
- Here we see two precise tooled spheres perching atop a marble cube
- Some of the cube has been chiseled to create hollows and other irregularities
- The carved circular openings in the spheres suggest the penetrating pupils of eyes
- However, for Louise whose are often alludes to gender issues in her work, these carved openings may represent female anatomy and the marble block, a house
- This may suggest the relationship between a woman and her domestic role-a theme that this artists revisits in many art works.
Qualities of Wood Sculptures
Wood may be carved, scraped, drilled, and polished. Wood may also be permanently molded and bent (under heat plywood can take on any shape). Different levels of hardness/graininess.
Tensile Strength
The degree to which a material can withstand being stretched.
- “Soft Toilet”
- Claes Oldenburg - 1966
- Constructed of vinyl, kapok, cloth, and Plexiglass.
- Oldenburg was a Russian who visited Picasso’s Paris studio who is accredited for having realized the 3D potential of constructed sculpture
- With this lighthearted work, a familiar object that we know to be hard, cold, and
stationary is transformed into this supple, pliable, and soft object…and certainly
unusable!
Mixed Media
The use of two or more media to create a single image.
Assemblage
Form of constructed sculpture in which preexisting, or found, objects, recognizable in form, are intergrated by the sculptore into novel combinations that take on a life and meaning of their own.
Land Art
Site-specific work that is created or marked by an artist within natural surroundings.
- “Spiral Jetty”
- Robert Smithson - 1970
- Basalt and earth bulldozed into a spiral formation in Utah’s Great Salt Lake
- Spiral shape of the jetty was inspired by a whirlpool, as well as the configuration of salt deposit that accumulate on rocks bordering the lake
- “The Ice Cube project”
- Marco Evaristti - 2004
- Crew of 20 sprayed 780 gallons of red dye onto an almost 10,000 sq ft iceberg.
- Perfect “frozen canvas”
- “The Gates in Central Park”
- Christo and Jeanne Claude - 1979-2005
- Fought to build this by many artists.
- 7503 saffron panels - “golden river” snaking thru a winter scene
- 23 miles of footpaths thruout central park
- To be able to outline, to really see, the paths designed by Olmsted and Vaux thruout Central Park - w/lazy loops, serpentine curves, ups and downs
- Was up for a brief 16 days, but its conception began back in 1979 - theyhad to fight every step of the way
- First proposal was in 1981 and was rejected
- 12-15 ft intervals, 16 ft high
- “Serpent/Salamander”
- Antoni Gaudi - 1900-1914
- Stands at entrance. Ornamented w/lavish mosaic bases.
- Commissioned by Eusebi Guell as a garden-like center for the rich to overlook the city
- Abandoned after Parc Guell finished
- Hypostyle hall w/ornamented columns w/mosaic bases - originally intended to serve as a public market.
- On top of the hall is an esplanade whose perimeter is lined w/serpentine, mosaic
stone benches - Gaudi known for his organic forms
- “Vietnam Veterans memorial”
- Maya Ying Lin - 1982
- In order to read the names, we must descent gradually into the earth, and back up. Possibly symbolic of the nation’s involvement in Vietnam.
- Forms a “V” roughly 200 ft per side. There is a gradual descent to reach the point where the sides connect
- We are the participants, not observers
- We touch the walls, the names, reflect back to the memory that fills us with tears
- Dignified and understand memorial has caused many objections by those who wanted a more traditional, more heroic memorial.
- It was chosen from 1421 entries - Lin was 22 at the time (native of Ohio) and just graduated from Yale University in Architecture.
Architecture
Art and science of designing buildings, bridges, and other structures to help us meet our personal and communal needs.
Adobe bricks
Bricks that have been dried in the sun, rather than fired in a kiln
Kiva
A circular, subterranean structure built by Native Americans of the Southwest for community and ceremonial functions.
Groin vault
A vault that is constructed by placing barrel vaults at right angles so that a square is covered.
Barrel Vault
a roofed-over space or tunnel constructed as an elongated arch
Rib
In Gothic architecture, a structural member that reinforces the stress points of groin vaults.
Flying buttress
A buttress that is an exterior to a building but connected in a location that permits the buttress to support an interior vault.
- “The Parthenon on the Acropolis, Athens”
- Athens, Greece
- Roman culture
- Doric order
- Ictinos and Callicrates - 448-432 BCE
- One of the most influential buildings in the history of architecture.
- “Pont du Gard, Nimes, France”
- Nimes, France
- Roman culture
- Use of arches - functionally
- Early Empire - 14 CE
- Carried water over long distances which furnised recipients with gallons of water per day.
- Gradual slope that allows gravity to do the work
- In the arches, wedge - shaped blocks of stone called voussoirs, and are gradually placed in position ascending a wooden scaffold called a centering
- When the center, or keystone, is set in place, the weight of the blocks is all at once transmitted in an arc laterally and downward and then the scaffolding is
removed. - The gravity of each block serves as ‘cement’ - the blocks fall into each other so the very weight now prevents them from budging
- “Chartres Cathedral”
- Chartres, France
- French culture
- High Gothic
- begun 1134 CE, rebuild after 1194 CE
- Considered the 1st High Gothic church.
- “St. Sernin Cathedral”
- French culture
- Romanesque - 1080-1120 CE
- Toulouse, France
- “The Pantheon”
- Rome, Italy
- Roman culture
- Corinthian order
- Early empire - 117-125 CE
- Brick and concrete structure
- “Eiffel Tower”
- Paris, France
- Gustave Eiffel - 1889
- Industrial exhibition
- “Le Corbuseir, Chapel of Notre-Dame-Du-Haut”
- French culture
- Reinforced Concrete architecture
- Ronchamp France - 1950-1954
- “Relic 130”
- Cheryl Ann Thoma - 2008
- Created by individual coils of clay to create this piece of art. Nestled next to one another and then folded and shaped into trompe l’oeil objects resembling woven cloth.
- “Jackson Pollock”
- Robert Arneson - 1983
- Glazed and ceramic work and illustrates how blurred the line between craft and fine art can be.
- Interior of the Chapel of the Rosary, Vence - “The Tree of Life”
- Henri Matisse
- Overlay of what appears to be falling leaves (blue, greens - cool down/yellow - warmth)
- “Portland Vase”
- Roman, 3rd century
- Created in 3 steps: Underlying form was blown from dark blue glass; a coating of semi-opaque white glass was added to the surface of the basic blue form; and the white glass was carved away to provide the bas-relief of figures and vegetations that circumscribe the vase.
- “The Arbadil Carpet” woolen pile
- Probably Tabriz - 1539-1540
- Persian rub woven in 16th century. Portrays the old Islamic concept of Paradise as a garden.
Portal
Emphasized doorjam/doorway - very ornate
Seen in Churches and Civic architecture
