ARTH notes 2/4/2019

Michelangelo
• David
• Work was seen as political (greek style, referencing democracy) and was perceived as
crossing the boundary between art and politics
• Influenced heavily by Greek
• Nudity

Manet
• Subject matter was seen as too modern
• Style was different than the conventional style
• About “artistic inspiration”. People in the painting are “muses” seen through the male
gaze

Marcel Duchamp
• New York Armory Show of 1913
• Execution of work seen as too modern. Artists vision was seen as too chaotic
• “nude, descending, and staircase”

Maya Lin
• Medium was used in an entirely new way
• Lack of iconography was considered disrespectful and too opaque

Richard Serra
• Work destroyed as a result of public opinion

Vanitas

Mappelthorpe/Vanitas
•Naked children

Eathworks/temporal space
• Great salt lake, swirl, symbolic red white and blue colors

Fred Wilson
•Mining the museum
•Silver manacles
• High cost of civilization
Mudras
• Symbolic hand gestures that refer to specific states of mind or events in the life of
Buddha
The most fundamental way in which we understand or “apprehend” art is through the body

Gold shopping cart

•The artist’s intent was to show; contemporary culture materialism/commercialism

The goddess
• nobody knows

Red arches
• Japan
• culture
• meaning
• walk through it representing change in level of consciousness

Jeanne Claude
• Shinto Gates
• New York city
• Wild, dynamic, mobile
• juxtaposition of Japan and USA

Stars:
• to help us see the world in a new and innovative way

Orange banana shaped thing/Kimono for actors (men in drag)

• Lending beauty and dignity to utilitarian objects

Picasso:
• Cubism
• influenced by African art

Beth Ringgold
• Name the icons: prison bars, the star, the flag, the pledge of allegiance, the quilt

Flags connected like ant farms

• Borders are arbitrary

Lorna Simpson
• Woman dressed as a man
• Gender roles
•What you’re expected to look like man vs woman

Basquiat
•Tryptic: three parts
 • Iconography/content:
•Formal elements: narrative/story, contemporary story told in contemporary way

Fred Wilson
• Mining the museum
• High cost of civilization

Magritte
• Purpose (it’s a drawing of a pipe, not a pipe):
• Relationship between words and images
• How does the artist create the dynamic?

Manet:
• Rejected for being too modern
• sloppy, messy, dull colors
• Artistic inspiration, ahead of its time

Jasper Johns
• Why does he choose the American flag: propensity to choose icons that we see all the
time but never really look at

Olmec heads
• we don’t know what they mean

Spiral Jetty:
• Salt lake city

Asian Landscape:
• Black and white = ying and yang
• The painting and calligraphy is the same thing because there is no difference between
the character for a waterfall, and a waterfall
• Doesn’t matter what mountain looks like, trying to capture the soul of the mountain

Bamboo
• Soul of the bamboo, not realism

nonrepresentational:
• abstract
• no iconography
• Instead look at the formal elements

Manuscript:
• Culture: islamic
 • Form: Devotional
• Purpose: Not competing with the “creator”

New York