Exam 2

Question 1

Answer 1

Paul Cézanne,The Sea at L’Estaque,1878-79, France

• Around the time he was working with Pissarro
• Brush strokes don’t seem to be following any specific flow
• Monet’s is a bit more active, while Cezanne uses plaques of color
• not much of individual characteristics to each house

Question 2

Answer 2

Cézanne, Still Life with Jug and Fruit, c. 1900, France

• Almost random brush strokes, not really sure what they are representing
• Everything is tipping forward very awkwardly
• Cezanne throws of expectations on how space works and puts together his own rules
• Does not use traditional modeling techniques• Weirdness of how paint is overlapping different parts
• Often not clear what we’re looking at as he is not that committed to replicating reality
• short brush strokes in a way that’s almost random/patchy
• perspective skewed again
• not using traditional modeling techniques for demonstrating the shapes of objects

Question 3

Answer 3

Cézanne,The Great Bathers, 1898-1905, France

• Tons of figures
• Definitely not interested in bathing being sexy
• I really have no idea what the fuck is happening in this and it’s gross and are the trees making a v because vagina or because it’s just windy or is it supposed to be a triangle for like interest in the eye
• No haha splash splash aka no interaction
• emphasizing the actual act of it and the community (there are many many bathers, not just a few here)
• he’s interested in less sexiness of the nude
• they are there to be clean and not flirtatious
• not as classical, the colors
• relationship of the figures to the background

Question 4

Answer 4

Paul Sérusier, The Talisman, 1888, France

• Most radical painting from this Pont-Aven school (Group of artists working at the same place in Brittany)
• Strong color, large blocks of color
• Became inspiration for an entire group of painters that were friends with him
• he condemns copying stuff from life and not being original with subject matter
• true art comes from the mind as well and not just duplicating what we see
• the mental image of what we see is formed from thinks like memory and individual sensations - and that’s what’s really important!
• he’s not a huge fan of models - real people move and have thoughts and a model in the studio isn’t going to help you capture that
• he’s very anti-nature, wants people to focus on what’s in their head

Question 5

Answer 5

James Ensor, Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889, 1888, Belgium

• Profoundly dark sense of humour
• Makes jokes at expense of society

Question 6

Answer 6

Fernand Khnopff, Caresses, 1896, Belgium

• Reference to Oedipus and the Sphinx
• Man seems bedazzled and vulnerable, very kinky
• Strange sexual, animal human undertones
• Strange shape, almost like a decorative frieze

Question 7

Answer 7

Edvard Munch, The Dance of Life, 1899-1900, Norway

• Have a strange zombie face thing going on
• Something crucial, life/death, time passing, innocence vs unhappy or experience
• Figures on either side of the painting look similar and they may be a representation of life and death
• stylized human depictions, fairly two dimensional looking, hard to give it an exact setting
• distortion of faces and colors, zombie-like features
• left half is happier looking and the right looks spookier and more glum

Question 8

Answer 8

Maurice Denis, Ascent to Calvary, 1889, France

• Religious subject
• Gives lots of numbered
• very symbolic
• he is very adamant about what’s good and what is bad
• the triumph of the imagination and emotion of the beautiful over the lie of other things

Question 9

Answer 9

Maurice Denis, Homage to Cézanne,1900, France

Question 10

Answer 10

Gustav Klimt, Beethoven Frieze - detail, The Hostile Forces, 1902, Austria

• Gorilla with no arms representing hotility
• Tons of decorative paintwork
• Feeling of the painting is both deeply traditional in that it looks like Egyptian art, but also creating an alternative universe with no weight or space
• Experimenting with a long list of techniques and media
• End of painting represents Beethoven’s ode to joy
• Sexy embrace of nude features in gold and painted decorations
• very much symbolism painting
• comissioned for exhibition on Beethoven
• exaggeration of forms, proportions are elongated and kinda frightening
• doesn’t really depict any space that we know of

Question 11

Answer 11

Pablo Picasso, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, Spanish, worked in France

• non-representation
• contrast between light and dark
• intense brush strokes, some follow shapes, some don’t
• cubistic portrait, of an art dealer
• drab color palatte

Question 12

Answer 12

Salvador Dali, Inventions of the Monsters, 1937, Spanish

• idea of the unconscious being accessible through dreams
• very dreamy colos, due to subject matter
• bottom right, used to be a blue dog, pigment has faded over time
• Dali and wife at table
• sent museum telegraph explaining the peice