First Art History Tutorial.....

As mentioned in the previous post this really is a vast subject.  I forgot to mention that in the first lecture we also watched a bit of the BBC series 'How Art Made The World' with Dr Nigel Spivey.  It was the first episode 'More Human Than Human' and was covering the realism aspect of people portrayed through art across the centuries. The distinctive features portrayed in 2 and 3 D art such as in Egyptian art the way that the people are usually portrayed in profile.

Our tutorial followed the lecture we covered some key terms in our smaller groups.  The first being'criterion' which is to do with standard and can be a basis for comparison.  For example hotels get awarded their stars based on certain criteria.
The next term 'evaluation' which means to asses or appraise.

We talked about tradition in art and how it is important to understand previous art movements to fully appreciate the production of subsequent artworks.  Artists influences is another aspect of this for example Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Manet which caused controversy at the time (in 1863).  

 So Manet obviously studied the old masters as his composition is a cheekily reworked copy of a Raphael composition.  If you look the engraving below created by Marcantonio Raimondi from a design by Raphael Sanzio in 1510-1520 called  The Judgement Of Paris you can spot the 3 main characters posing together.

 Of course not all art has this kind of historical background story ; but most does have influences, connections and inspirations from what has gone before and this can be interesting to look at.  It may or may not then convey a deeper 'message'.  From the above we could not only study Manet's work of the time and it's meaning; but also look at Raphael's and what it may have meant at the time.  

Also in this example the piece has been further 'played with' and used by other artists.  For example Pablo Picasso seemed very inspired by the figures and did many paintings and drawings entitled  Le déjeuner sur l'herbe such as this one to a friend, Norman Granz, in 1969.

We then were asked about present day (contemporary) artists that we liked and their work and we looked at a few to see if we could spot where there visual influences had come from.  We discussed connections we could see with other pieces and other artists...this was an interesting exercise to do and I will explorer this more in a later blog.  The discussion included artists Ernesto Neto, Janet Echelman, Hans R Giger and Michelangelo Caravaggio..a good start!