Precursors to Modern Art Flashcards
Age of Enlightenment
(1750-1789) Intellectual, social, and political change. Science gains influence and religions and monarchies lose it.
Age of Positivism
(1848-1885) Realism returns to society and visual art. Beauty is before one’s eyes.
Neoclassicism
(1750s) Images and themes from ancient Greece, Rome, mythology, and later, Egyptology.
Romanticism
(1789-1848 France) Emotion, drama, and the sublime.
French Realism
(1850 France) Visual accuracy.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
(1848 UK) Mimetic, with themes from nature, literature, and history.
Impressionism
(1872 France) Unmixed dabs of unblended paint (little or no black) to recreate the sensory experience of reflected light.
Post-Impressionism
(1800s-1905 France) Separate groups united by the rejection of Impressionism.
Synthetism
The outward appearance of a subject, plus the artist’s feeling toward that subject with purity of color, line, and form.
Neo-Impressionism
A rejection of Impressionism based on combining the real, ideal, fugitive, and scientific.
Cloisonism/Japonaiserie
(1888) Bright colors outlined (usually) in black.
Symbolism
Death, angels, the supernatural, a desire to leave the earthly plane.
Primitivism/Naive Art
(1891?) Primitive subject matter and naive (untrained) artists.
Arts & Crafts
(1860s)
Art Nouveau
(1890-1910 France/International) Flora, female forms.
The Death of Socrates
- Jacques Louis-David
- 1787
- France
- Neoclassicism
- Contextualism: Socrates has been charged with impiety and the corruption of youth, so he commits suicide.
- Horizontally arranged, medium-deep, good value pattern
Watson and the Shark
- John Singleton Copley
- 1778
- US
- American Romanticism
- Biographical: A 14-year-old cabin boy (Brooke Watson) loses a leg in Cuban waters.
- Triangular arrangement, deep, good value pattern
Arrangement in Black and Gray
- James Abbott Mac Neil Whistler
- 1871
- US
- American Realism
- Contextualism: This is a traditional art piece that is simply what it is. It fits inside the box of realism, which was the art movement at the time.
- Weak triangle arrangement, shallow-medium depth, good value pattern
Ophelia
- John Everett Millais
- 1852
- UK
- Pre-Raphaelite Art
- Contextualism: An imagined scene from the play Hamlet after Ophelia’s boyfriend goes mad and accidentally kills her father.
- Vertically arranged, medium-deep, good value pattern
Impression, Sunrise
- Claude Monet
- 1872
- France
- Impressionism
- Contextualism: Critics used impressionism as a derogatory term, but artists such as Monet liked the term and coined it as their own.
- Loose triangle arrangement, deep, good value pattern
1440 (Technological Development)
Johannes Gutenberg (Germany) invents movable type. By 1753, 20,000 newspapers are sold each day in England.
1770 (Technological Development)
Joseph Priestly (UK) invents the eraser.
1800 (Technological Development)
Humphrey Davy (UK) invents the electric light.
1825 (Technological Development)
The formula for Portland cement is developed (UK).
1826 (Technological Development)
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (France) takes the first photograph (View from the Artist’s Window at La Gros).
1841 (Technological Development)
John Goff Rand (US) invents the collapsible tin tube to hold paint.
1852-4 (Technological Development)
Elisha Otis (US) creates the safety elevator.
1854 (Technological Development)
Antonio Meucci (Italian) invents the telettrophono (telephone).
1876 (Technological Development)
Alexander Graham Bell (US) patents the telephone.
1878 (Technological Development)
Eadweard Muybridge (UK) synchronizes twelve cameras to take pictures in a half-second, to capture the movement of a horse (Horse in Motion).
1879 (Technological Development)
Thomas Edison (US) patents the light bulb.
1883 (Technological Development)
The Brooklyn Bridge is completed (John Roebling & Sons).
1884 (Technological Development)
George Eastman develops flexible photographic film.
1885 (Technological Development)
The first curtain wall building rises in Chicago (The Home Insurance Building).
1889 (Technological Development)
William Friese-Greene (UK) patents the first movie camera.
1891 (Technological Development)
William Dickson (US) unveils the kinetoscope. Viewers pay to see a man sneeze.
1893 (Technological Development)
Auguste Lumiere (France) invents the movie projector and the documentary film genre.
1900 (Technological Development)
James Blackton (UK) creates the first animated film.
1764 (Significant Document)
The Sense of the Beautiful and the Sublime (Immanuel Kant (Germany)) distinguishes between the two.
1792 (Significant Document)
A Vindication of the Rights of Women (Mary Wollstonecraft (England)) asserts that women are the equals of men.
1835 (Significant Document)
On the Functions of the Brain and Each of its Parts… (Franz Joseph Gall (Germany)) mentions pseudoscience of phrenology, conceived in 1796 by Gall.
1848 (Significant Document)
The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels)
1864 (Significant Document)
Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (Maurice Joly (France)) is a fictional satire criticizing the reign of Napoleon III.
1878 (Significant Document)
L’uomo delinquente (Cesare Lombroso (Italy)) claims measurements on the skull and facial features reveal criminal tendencies.
1883 (Significant Document)
Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (Francis Galton (England)) mentions eugenics, the idea of selective breeding in human beings.
1863 (Significant Document)
The Painter in Modern Life (Charles Baudelaire (France)) defines “modernity.”
1872, 1910 (Significant Document)
Birth of Tragedy and Will to Power (Friedrich Nietzche (Germany)) mentions the structure of society but is twisted by his sister, Elizabeth.
1888/89 (Significant Document)
The Secret Doctrine (Helena Blavatsky (Russian)) mentions the stages of human existence as “learned” on an imagined trip to Tibet.
