Art History: From Rococo to Conceptual Art in Western Movements

Rococo and Neoclassicism

Rococo: reign of Louis XV (1715-1774), contrast with the Baroque, characterized by elegance and extravagance. Aristocracy: Vigée Le Brun, 1782, worldly art.

Neoclassicism: Enlightenment and the French Revolution (1789-1799), absolute monarchy, Paris as center, a neo instrument of diffusion. Napoleonic Empire: almost the same as the Renaissance. Church of Madeleine (1806-1842), classical colonnade, Last Judgment frieze, commissioned by Napoleon.

Eros: 1783-1793, Antonio Canova, unifacial, center, The Kiss, commissioned by John Campbell in 1787, influence of Damià Campeny, Apuleius and Psyche: love.

Painting: The Oath of the Horatii (1784), linear perspective, literary tragedy theme, Horace, Rome, Curiatii, Alba Longa, propaganda commissioned by d'Angiviller for Louis XVI.

Romanticism

Context: war with France, abolition of the constitution in 1814, unification of Italy and Germany, The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819), shipwreck, Senegal, Liberty Leading the People (1830), Eugène Delacroix, aerial perspective, color, drawing, free brushwork, historical capture, allegorical theme. Revolution of 27-29 July 1830: fall of the monarchy and establishment of Louis Philippe of Orléans. Propagandistic function, exhibited in 1861.

Realism

Photography, Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848). A Burial at Ornans (1849-1850), Gustave Courbet, costumbrist scene, denunciation, theatricality, Caravaggio.

The Vicarage (1867-1870), realist, María Fortuny. Costumbrist theme: The Wedding Feast. Influence of Goya, luminous left side, collector function, closed composition.

Pre-Impressionism: Second Empire (1851-1870), Louis Napoleon, unification of Italy and Germany, succession, American Civil War (1861-1865), capital by Karl Marx (1867).

Pre-Impressionism and Impressionism

Country Dance (1863), flat closed planes, short and juxtaposed brushstrokes, Renaissance perspective, Japonisme. The painting was exhibited in Paris in 1863.

Impressionism: Third French Republic, failure of the Paris Commune, rise of the proletariat, first trade unions, engineering, Eiffel Tower (1887-1889), positivism, naturalism, two-dimensionality. Monet, Impression, Sunrise (1872): brushstroke, rapid and juxtaposed, horizontal rhythm.

Post-Impressionism and Symbolism

1880-1890: color, symbolism. Cézanne, The Card Players (1893), costumbrist theme, two sections, inverted triangle, geometric volume, artificial light, short brushstroke, schematic drawing, everyday theme. It influenced Fauvism.

The Night Café, Van Gogh (1888), post-Impressionism, ordered and deep composition, distinct rhythm, circular and undulating brushstrokes, curly and straight vertical lines, dichotomy. Fauvism seen from the psychiatric ward, depression.

Urbanism and Architecture

Urbanism: industrialization, bourgeoisie vs. engineers, reform of Paris, nationalism, glass and iron. Tower: 1887-1889, wrought iron, revolutionary cycle, unification of Italy and Germany, new powers: USA and Japan.

Chicago School

Chicago School: 1871, Great Chicago Fire, lack of space, iron and steel structure, reinforced concrete, functionalism. Mies van der Rohe.

Carson Pirie Scott: 1899-1901, civil engineering, reinforced concrete, iron, glass, second industrial revolution, American capitalism consolidation, Taylorism, base cornice, plant resistance, plant authority. Commissioned in 1904, construction, urban character, modern civil architecture, commercial bourgeoisie.

Catalan Modernisme

Catalan Modernisme: 1850-1923, iron, ceramics, bricks, two facades, art union, much decoration, Catalanism, reference to the Renaixença, medieval taste. Orfeó Català and Palau de la Música Catalana concert hall (1891).

Casa Milà (1906-1912), civil engineering, stone, ceramics and brick, five floors, attic and terrace, asymmetrical, free plan without walls, organic decoration integrated, elliptical courtyards, bourgeois relation, connection with the Sagrada Família, religious inscription on the cornice, evokes natural forms, sea, impact on the bourgeoisie.

Sculpture: The Thinker

The Thinker, Auguste Rodin: second industrial revolution, Third Republic, naturalism, symmetry, disproportion, reflective attitude, infinite dynamism, metaphor of a man thinking in a tempest within the hell of the mortal, initial motif Dante's Divine Comedy, influence of Michelangelo.

Avant-Gardes and Architecture

Decorative avant-gardes: Barcelona Pavilion, free plan, eight pillars, architrave system, transparent, versatile, marble, onyx, granite, steel, glass, prefabricated elements. Function: contrast, presentation, 1929, Montjuïc.

Weimar Germany. Kaufmann House: organicist, 1936-1939, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Expressionism and the Spanish Civil War

Guernica is expressionist (1937). First and Second World Wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945), Russian Revolution, Wall Street Crash of 1929, Second Spanish Republic, Spanish Civil War, Primo de Rivera (1924-1930), political denunciation, bombing, chaos, triangle, triptych, symmetrical, predominantly drawing, reduced color, fake light, dynamism, bombings of 26 April 1937, homage.

Influence of The Raft of the Medusa, 1981-1982 movement, composition 4, 1911, Kandinsky, abstract, flat, decorative aesthetic function.

Surrealism and Dalí

Dalí, The Persistence of Memory (1931), oneiric theme, self-portrait, time, fear, insects, cap of Rueu, relative time, childhood, diagonal, balance.

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), bronze, free-standing sculpture, much volume, aggressiveness, dynamism, geometry, multifaceted man, modern decoration. Prophet (1933), Second Republic, Barcelona Exposition (1929), Nazism, Fascism, arms in contrapposto, power of the word, multifaceted.

Moon, 1935, Joan Miró, surrealist, non-figurative theme, sentimental bond, mother, symmetry, Woman and Bird (1983), asymmetrical.

Postwar and Contemporary Art

Urbanism: 2nd avant-garde, war, capital USA, ends 1990, Berlin Wall (1961), oil crisis (1973), consumerism, EU (1992), Rwanda (1994), Internet.

Francoism (1939-1975), transition (1975-1978), Spanish Constitution (1978), Barcelona Olympics (1992), May 1968, feminism, women's rights.

Jackson Pollock (1950), dripping, dynamism, Abstract Expressionism.

Antoni Tàpies (1975), material language, abstract, religious, informalist, grattage, volume, technique. Mixed media, Ramon Llull, existentialist concern, Campbell's Soup, Pop Art, still life.

Andy Warhol (1965), screen print, advertising, pre-drawing, ironic games, overcoming postwar, the question of high art and commercial art.

Frida Kahlo (1954), symbolic, surrealist, oil on canvas.

One and Three Chairs, Joseph Kosuth (1965), conceptual installation, reflection on the limit between art and reality.