Girl in Blue Armchair

Girl in Blue Armchair
Artist Mary Cassatt
Style Impressionism


In Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, Mary Cassatt demonstrates her powers of observation in showing her young subject sprawled in a large, blue armchair. The smartly dressed little girl fidgets; in the next chair is her sleeping dog. The girl's pose has the naturalism of childhood that would later characterize many of Cassatt's paintings of children.
Mary Cassatt's paintings and graphics depict the world of nineteenth-century women, mothers, and children. Her exploration of intimate domestic life is informed by an unsurpassed ability to capture the natural, sometimes awkward poses of her figures. She avoided appealing to sentimentality by refusing to "prettify" her subjects, instead employing natural expressions and un-idealized models. Little Girl in a Blue Armchair represents the characteristic restless posture of a child in an oversized, adult chair, captured in a composition that is remarkable for its brilliant color and striking design.

Cassatt's strong colors and energetic brushwork mark her connection with the French impressionists. (Impressionism - A movement among late nineteenth-century French painters who sought to present a true representation of light and color. Working primarily outdoors, such artists applied small touches of paint to catch fleeting impressions of the scenes before them. Many American artists adopted the style.)
In style and subject matter, her art is close to that of Degas and Edouard Manet. Degas, in fact, made suggestions about the composition of this painting and reworked parts of its background. In Cassatt's pictures, light does not dissolve form. Instead, objects retain their mass and coherence with light enhancing their physical presence.

In the nineteenth century many artists were experimenting with subjects that formerly had been considered minor or unacceptable. Inspired by the realist imagery of painters Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet, and the writings of Emile Zola and Gustave Flaubert, young artists rejected the conventional idea that serious painting had to illustrate a strong underlying moral or ethical theme. Instead they chose to record the world as they viewed it, depicting their surroundings and contemporary life in the city and countryside. Mary Cassatt's images of women and of children are a part of this broad movement in art and literature to represent aspects of everyday life in the second half of the nineteenth century.

A new approach to painting paralleled this emphasis on contemporary subjects. Academic artists had used a sober palette, with a variety of neutral and dark tones. They applied their paint in carefully blended brushstrokes that resulted in a widely admired, smooth, enamel-like surface. The Impressionists believed that bright color and broad, obvious brushstrokes were more appropriate in conveying the shimmering effects of outdoor light, and in capturing the immediacy of everyday life. Cassatt painted her early Salon submissions in the darker tones of the old masters, but under the influence of the Impressionists, her palette brightened noticeably.

Cassatt painted this canvas shortly after she first came into contact with the Impressionists. In fact, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair may have appeared in the 1879 exhibition under the title Portrait of a Young Girl. The brilliant color and bold, loosely handled brushstrokes are characteristic of her work at this time. Note the confident brushwork in the foreground chairs and in the little girl's outfit. Details of texture are not meticulously defined, but instead are suggested by the rapidly applied brushstrokes. The immediacy suggested by the handling of the surface is accentuated by the novelty of the composition.
Pictorial structure and clarity are the foundation of Cassatt's art. Under Edgar Degas' tutelage, she began to collect and study Japanese prints; their patterns and asymmetric designs greatly influenced her work. Here she placed the girl, the focus of the composition, off-center. The armchairs form a pattern encircling an oddly shaped patch of gray floor in the middle of the picture. As in Japanese art, the forms are tilted up, and the edge of the canvas crops the image. Many artists were influenced by the dramatic non-western perspective, strong colors, and arbitrary cropping found in the inexpensive woodblock prints. The impact of Asian art on nineteenth-century painting is evident in the way part of each chair is deliberately sheared off at the frame.
This painting shows the girl is in her private world with petulant boredom. The unusual perspective may have been influenced by her recent friendship with Degas. The sofas are treated in a painterly blue with pattern, and unlike the Salon, which portrayed children with sweetness; this child is allowed to be herself. Cassatt wrote, "I love to paint children. They are so natural and truthful."

"Viewing Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" Through Mary Cassatt's Impressionist Lens"

Mary Cassatt, nineteenth-century American Impressionist, combined realistic detail with obvious artistic technique to represent penetrating psychological glimpses into women in domestic interiors; Kate Chopin, nineteenth-century American realist writer, incorporated some of the same representational techniques to narrate "a truly remarkable tale about a subdued wife's vision of living only for herself" (Seyersted 57). Cassatt's treatment of color, space, and gaze in Five O’clock Tea and Little Girl in a Blue Armchair provides a lens for viewing spatial and sensory images in Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour." In picturing female subjects, Cassatt employed impressionist spatial conventions and reversed the male gaze to provide nontraditional impressions of women, much as Chopin employed space and belied the male guess in her "experimental" tale. Thus, Cassatt's constrained colors and spaces make visible the physical and emotional constraints that Louise Mallard suffers in Chopin's "most startling picture of female self-assertion" (Seyersted 111).


http://cache.search.yahoo-ht2.akadns.net/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=Girl+in+Blue+Armchair+by+cassatt+point+of+view&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-501&u=wssa.asu.edu/pdf/abstracts/women.html&w=girl+girls+blue+armchair+cassatt+%22points+of+view%22+%22point+of+view%22+pointofview&d=FKZEAS72Q-In&icp=1&.intl=us

http://www.nga.gov/education/schoolarts/cassatt.htm

http://www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/ggcassattptg/ggcassattptg-61102.0.html

Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt
American painter
1844-1926


Mary Stevenson Cassatt (May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926) was an American painter. Born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh, she was the daughter of a well-do-to businessman. Cassatt grew up in an environment that valued education. Her parents believed travel was a way to learn, and before she was 10 years old, she visited many of the capitals of Europe, including London, Paris, and Berlin. After a few years of life in Paris, the family went back to the USA.
Mary, impressed by all the art she had seen in Europe, surprised her parents by the wish to become an artist. Becoming an artist in the 19th century was as difficult for a woman as becoming a doctor. Society then had a different understanding of the role of women.

Finally Mary won and her parents allowed her to visit the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1866 she went back to Paris. She copied the old masters in the Louvre and other museums. The young woman artist had acquired pretty good skills in traditional art style and in 1872 a Mary Cassatt painting was even accepted by the judges of the Salon.

Then she got to know Edgar Degas, an artist from the group of Impressionists who were refused by the Salon and had established their own show, the Salon des Refuses. Edgar Degas introduced her to his friends Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and other Impressionist rebels.

Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas became good friends. Some art historians think she also was his mistress. This is however rather questionable as Degas was considered a convinced misogynist. Under the influence of Edgar Degas and the other Impressionists the artist Mary Cassatt changed her painting style. She used light colors and began to paint people.

Mary Cassatt's favorite subjects became children and women with children in ordinary scenes. Her paintings express a deep tenderness and her own love for children. But she never had children of her own.

The artist's artistic breakthrough came in 1892, when she received a commission for a mural for the Woman's Building at the Chicago World's Fair. The mural painting got lost after the fair and has not shown up until today.


Her Role in Promoting Impressionism

Mary Cassatt influenced Impressionism not only as an artist. She also had an important role in sponsoring and in financial promotion of Impressionist art. She often bought paintings of her friends when they were short of cash. And with her connections to rich American families, she encouraged many of her countrymen to buy Impressionist art. Quite a few of the great Impressionist art collections in the USA were established as a result of her activities. The collection of 19th century French paintings of the Havemeyers was largely mediated by her. The collection is now in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

She died on June 14, 1926 at Château de Beaufresne, near Paris, and was buried in the family vault at Mesnil-Théribus, France. Before 2005, her paintings sold for as much as $2.8 million.

http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=a&a=i&ID=810

http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=629
http://www.renoirinc.com/biography/artists/cassatt.htm

Baudelaire

Charles Pierre Baudelaire was an influential nineteenth century French poet, critic and acclaimed translator. He was called the father of modern criticism, who shocked his contemporaries with his visions of lust and decay. Baudelaire's influence on the direction of modern French (and English) language literature was considerable. Whatever was consider beautiful for society at that time it was considered ugly for him or vise versa. He underscored what society was against. Spiritual, or emotional reality had much more value than anything else for him. He believed that the modern painters or artists should be Flaneur meaning that somebody who spends all his time looking and observing the world all day and all night. In order to do that they need time and money, which means they did not care about any commissions and painted art for art sake. So they needed to be wealthy to search the world around. Another assumption was that going far anywhere in 19th century was completely restricted for women. For example, women could not go to cafés and the only places that they could go where Opera or park with several people. Therefore painters had to be males in a very detached style. Because Baudelair believed that if you are not part of the people who are looking at something, you would be able to see things, that you wouldn’t other wise see if were embedded in it. He also talked about modernity. There are two prerequisites for paintings that are representing modernity. Half of the art should consider fugitive, contingent and ephemeral, meaning that currently, spontaneously happening and transitory. The other half of the art should consider eternal and immutable, meaning that the subject matter should be love, emotion, suffering, grief, fear, lost and anger. All of them are raw feelings they may change over time but always it is going be immutable. So beauty is not eternal it changes all time. For example, Goya’s piece (Saturn devouring his children) is eternal, because it shows suffering and emotion.
He also talked about how artists should use their own imagination. He mentioned lazy artists just copy costumes or other things only from past and from Greco-roman mythology. They are not doing anything new. The real artists should look around the world at the texture or all the details and put it into paintings. Baudelair said it had problem with Ingres paintings. His paintings are all artificial and are not real, in term of costumes, mythology and gestures.

Charles Pierre Baudelaire talked about society. He is talking about many ladies were going to opera looked aristocratic, pretty and gorgeous in many senses. They had beautiful jewelries, well done hair and beautiful dresses. They seem to be looking at the opera but in reality that’s not what they are looking at. They are just looking at distance, that’s all. When you look at her she looks like society, society is definition of beautiful. At first glance you think she lacks nothing else at all. Everything represents the entire element in society. Therefore, she lacks nothing outside, but truly she lacks everything inside. She has no distinction at all. They look beautiful, but if you take a closer look there is nothing there valuable like society.
He also talked about men too. Aristocratic men look artificial too. Barbers created top of his bodies and bottom of his bodies were also created by tailors. So they have been created.
France was not a fashionable country before 1850’s and 1860’s. Paris was a ghettos place, which had no sewerage. It was a place for all immigrants, gypsies and homeless people. So people never wanted to go there because they thought they could have some diseases, so only people could not live anywhere else lived there. Napoleon the third hired Haussmann. Napoleon wanted Paris to be a cosmopolitan city and a good capital. So he asked Haussmann to renovate the Paris. He created and instituted Haussmanization or urbanization. He created contracts for private owners to bring their department store. He made the Paris we all know now. Everything built: cafes operas, parks and bridges. So there was no differentiation between people’s class. Everybody looked the same and they had the same cloths. Because the visual fabric of Paris changed the social fabric changed too. Therefore, Baudelair said look around and capture the new world instead of looking in the past only. There is something so amazingly going on. So individuals and people who lived in Paris at that time, they did not live for themselves, or they did not exist for themselves they lived for pleasure of other’s. Paris became a place for people watching, getting everybody’s attention. All people, prostitutes did not have anything to offer the society. All prostitutes looked pretty and happy. None of them are real or none of them are eternal. If you take a closer look at the bottom of all of them, there is nothing to exist. If you look at their faces there is a joy there as being alive regardless as anything else. That is real and true beauty. That is what Baudelair wanted that all painters of modern art should look in places that they don’t expect at all.
Before 1850’s and 1860’s, if was easy to identify and recognize the person you were looking at. They were all homeless and gypsy people. But now by the way they dressed no longer is recognizable person’s class. Because everything was purchasable it was hard to say what part of society the belonged.
Guy was an artist that Baudelair elevated his habit. Because he looked around the world and he did things in sketches. He used watercolor instead of pencil because it was quick, rapid and spontaneously. He tried to catch a feeling or gesture all the time. So Baudelair liked him because of the way he looked at world. On the other hand Ingres was not creative at all in his paintings.
In Manet’s The Old Musician, all individuals are on the same canvas from all different level of society but they have noting to do with each other and there is no relationship between them at all. It represented of Paris, people lived on the same space with no relationship whatsoever. There is no link between them. It was new kind of social relationship of Paris at that time after Haussmanization.

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas
French painter & sculptor
1834 - 1917


Degas was born to an aristocratic family, unusually supportive of his desire to paint. Edgar Degas was a French painter and sculptor, whose innovative composition, skillful drawing, and perceptive analysis of movement made him one of the masters of modern art in the late 19th century. Degas is usually classed with the impressionists, and he exhibited with them in seven of the eight impressionist exhibitions. However, his training in classical drafting and his dislike of painting directly from nature produced a style that represented a related alternative to impressionism.
Degas was born into a well-to-do banking family on July 19, 1834, in Paris. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under a disciple of the famous French classicist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, where Degas developed the great drawing ability that was to be a salient characteristic of his art. Degas admired Ingres's work and believed, as the great master did, in the primary importance of drawing in the creation of a work of art. During the eighteenth century, much was made of the rivalry between Ingres the draftsman and Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), who placed greater emphasis on the role of color in painting. Degas was enamored of both artists and acquired their works for his own art collection.
After 1865, under the influence of the budding impressionist movement, he gave up academic subjects to turn to contemporary themes. But, unlike the impressionists, he preferred to work in the studio and was uninterested in the study of natural light that fascinated them. Theatrical subjects attracted him, and most of his works depict racecourses, theaters, cafés, music halls, or boudoirs. Degas was a keen observer of humanity—particularly of women, with whom his work is preoccupied—and in his portraits as well as in his studies of dancers, milliners, and laundresses, he cultivated a complete objectivity, attempting to catch his subjects in poses as natural and spontaneous as those recorded in action photographs.



In the early 1870s the female ballet dancer became his favorite theme. He sketched from a live model in his studio and combined poses into groupings that depicted rehearsal and performance scenes in which dancers on stage, entering the stage, and resting or waiting to perform are shown simultaneously and in counterpoint, often from an oblique angle of vision.
After 1865, under the influence of the budding impressionist movement, he gave up academic subjects to turn to contemporary themes. But, unlike the impressionists, he preferred to work in the studio and was uninterested in the study of natural light that fascinated them. He was attracted by theatrical subjects, and most of his works depict racecourses, theaters, cafés, music halls, or boudoirs.Degas was a keen observer of humanity -- particularly of women, with whom his work is preoccupied -- and in his portraits as well as in his studies of dancers, milliners, and laundresses, he cultivated a complete objectivity, attempting to catch his subjects in poses as natural and spontaneous as those recorded in action photographs.
Famous and revered, Degas died in Paris on 27th September 1917, and is buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris. He left more than 2,000 oil paintings and pastels, and 150 sculptures, the latter unsurprisingly mostly depicting racehorses and dancers.


http://www.answers.com/topic/edgar-degas?cat=entertainment
http://arthistory.heindorffhus.dk/frame-Degas.htm
http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/art/65/edgar_degas.htm

Imaginary Orient

Imaginary Orient


Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian American literary theorist, cultural critic, political activist, and an outspoken advocate of Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and is a founding figure in postcolonial theory. He creates theoretical and philosophical frame works in social sciences and literature and applied to visual and within culture, so he is talking about the being orient, Asia and more emphasized on middle east. In his framework representation of the orient is in art, movie and literature. Western representation created by the west for the west, which is more about western point of view rather than reality of orient. So in said frameworks colonization and domination are playing a big role. What he is saying by that is because of colonization and domination; it was more about western rather than the actual people living in Middle East. Said said, constructions of orient are in opposition what we consider west to be like, civilized, modern and enlighten society in opposition of uncivilized, uncultured and inferior.

The movie (300) is a degrading portrayal of ancient Persians. The film tries to portray them as a monstrous and hostile people. It is not the first time Hollywood has created a portrayal that offends Iranians, and the film must be countered accordingly.Frank Miller, the author of the original graphic novel, has knowingly manipulated the realities and has demonstrated his shallow understanding of these actual 'histories'.

300 tries to promote a long-outdated belief that to be non-Greek means to be barbarian. It is an ethnocentric premise that helped stroke the war depicted in the film.
300 portrays the Persian King Xerxes and his Ambassador as barbaric rulers and, even more erroneously, as men of African origin. The portrayal of non-Europeans as evil demonstrates the racist underpinnings of the film. Its depiction of black people as barbaric should offend anyone of African heritage.

It was interesting what Bernie Heidkamp mentioned about this movie and compared it to what Said concerned.
“I find Said’s work most compelling when he focused on the use of literature and art in the production of knowledge and the maintenance of Western popular assumptions about the Orient. 300 could function as Exhibit A in this regard. The Greek (rational, well-organized, frequently bathed, and white) and Persian (prone to magic, a horde, much less frequently bathed, non-white) ethnic and cultural stereotypes are so blatantly offensive that they come very near subverting themselves. There were parts of the film that really made me wonder if the filmmakers were indeed winking at the audience, such as the Spartans’ “Before we sally forth in defense of reason, let’s consult the Oracle!” bit, but I don’t think so. I find it interesting that quite a few people I’ve spoken to have criticized the movie’s representation of the Persians in terms that that I can only describe as Saidian. That is, they recognize the role that popular culture plays in reinforcing assumptions about the other, and the way that these assumptions service certain political ideologies. The fact that some tech dudes at a party, who had never heard of Edward Said, were casually pointing these things out to me between tequila shots can, I think, be seen as a victory for the better parts of Said’s work.”
I think western existence is offensive to most in the Middle East. If Middle-Eastern soldiers had come to your country and turned it into rubble, Middle-Eastern existence would be offensive to you, too.


http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:EPkLlY2JnkoJ:www.persianmirror.com/Article_det.cfm%3Fid%3D1997%26getArticleCategory%3D79%26getArticleSubCategory%3D118+what+is+imaginary+orient+about+iran&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=2975&sectionid=3510301

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E5D6153DF935A1575AC0A9659C8B63

Juste Milieu Movement...

July Monarchy and Juste Milieu Movement

The July Monarchy (1830-1848) was a period of liberal monarchy rule of France under Louis-Philippe. Charles X of the House of Bourbon was overthrown in the July Revolution, and was succeeded on August 9, 1830 by Louis-Philippe. July Monarchy is the name given to the reign of the Orléanist king Louis-Philippe. He came to power in 1830 after the Parisian insurrection of the July Day had driven Charles X from power into exile. In some respects the July Monarchy was a continuation of the previous regime, with a monarch, two chambers, and a small, wealthy electorate (though this continued to grow significantly throughout the reign). On the other hand, the style of the regime was less reactionary; there was greater press freedom and an extension of popular education. It was a period of industrial growth, in which the power of the rich bourgeoisie was consolidated (and became a favourite target of satirical writers and artists, from Stendhal to Daumier). Henri Monnier's Joseph Prudhomme symbolizes the middle-class smugness associated with the regime.

There were pro-Bourbon movements under the July Monarchy, but it also saw the growth of working-class movements. The regime fell in February 1848, partly as a result of economic difficulties, though the immediate trigger was the government's refusal to allow a patriotic banquet. Louis-Philippe abdicated on 24 February and took refuge in England.After Louis-Philippe became a king; he called himself “the king of French” instead of “king of France”. Why? Because he wanted to show the people he was the king of people and he was there for people of France. July monarchy witnessed two major events, 1- expansion and arrives of middle class, 2- begging of socialism.
Louis-Philippe ruled for a political policy called Juste milieu. "Juste milieu" translates as “the right mean,” or the “happy medium” or “ just medium”. These artists aimed for a middle way between the Impressionist and Academic camps. Juste milieu was not extremely conservative and was not very liberal. It was right in the middle for everyone. Juste milieu is a name given to both a philosophy of painting and a movement of painters in 19th century France. During Juste Milieu period there were several changes in art. At the end of July monarchy Juste Milieu became a style and movement. It means that artists took the best of Romanticism and Neoclassicism and put them together in order to make this particular movement. We also see some orientalist subject matter and landscape paintings. Gerome, Flandrin, Couture, and Cabanel are some artists who painted in Juste Milieu.
There was also a crucial period for French art culture. Before that time high art was only for upper class people to see them. So they would go to the museum to see the art pieces. Whereas so many people could not be able to see them. Salons were highly event at that time. There were held one or two times per year. Because of the expanding of the middle class during at that time, and portraits became everybody’s life. Before July monarchy they had 100 to 2000 entries for paintings but during July monarchy raised to 3400 paintings, which exhibited at salon. So with arise of paintings we had arise of people as well. People who used to go to the salon were wealthy, educated about art and knew the artists, but now there were so many people that had no idea about art and did not know anything about artists at all. So artists realized that and tried to paint something more acceptable for majority of people. Because artist exhibited their work at salons in order to sell them and make money, so salons basically became commercial industries and a business place for them. Therefore they took neoclassicism and Romanticism and made sure there was nothing too difficult for people on canvas. So there was no philosophical or political aspect between the piece and viewers unlike what Delacroix believed.
The artists wanted you to feel and realize that you know what art is and flatter you in some sense. Other wise they could not sell their pieces at all and people would walk away like Tony smith piece.

http://charon.sfsu.edu/publications/ParisExpositions/JulyMonarchyExpos.html
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1848guizot.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/july-monarchy

Francisco Goya

Francisco de Goya is an innovative Spanish Romanticism painter. Francisco de Goya is one of the greatest masters that Spain has ever produced and is considered the “Father of Modern Art”. His works, which are world known, changed the way artists would interpret the world. His works, paintings and drawings, spread on a span of 60 years covering from about the last half of the 18th century to the first quarter of the 19th century, and portray a celebration of life and a realistic view of the world.

Goya was born in the province of Zaragoza. When he was a teenager, he entered the service of a local artist. Later on, he travels to Madrid, where he is greatly influenced by the last of the great Venetian painters. After several failed attempts to enroll in the Royal Academy of San Fernando, Goya travels to Rome. Returning to Spain in the decade of the 1770s, Goya paints frescoes in several churches of his native province.

In 1792, Goya had a near fatal illness that left him totally deaf. During his recovery, isolated from society, he began to paint demons of his inner fantasy world and thus, his preoccupation with bizarre creatures began such as Saturn devouring one of his Children. In this painting, Goya had fearing that his children would supplant him, ate each one upon their birth. It is one of the series of black paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823. After Goya's death the work was transfered to canvas, and now resides in the Museo Del Prado in Madrid.

With gory precision, he reduces war scenes of barbarous torture to their horrifying basics. After a few years, Goya became obsessed with depicting the suffering caused by the political intrigue and decadence o the Spanish court and church. He disguised his repulsion with satire; however, such as in the disturbing "black paintings" he did on the walls of his villa. The fourteen large murals in dark tones present appalling monsters engaged in sinister acts.

With his wedding, Goya begins his ascension, working under Mengs, he finally enrolls in the royal academy and later on is named the King Charles III’s painter. By 1799, Goya becomes the official Chamber painter of King Charles IV.

Together with the critiques to his works, Goya undergoes a time of wild imagination, in which sordid images of a surreal world begin to appear. Unable to present his works to his old clientele, he is forced, under the threat of the Inquisition, to withdraw his works. Meanwhile he continued with his services as crown painter; and by 1800, he creates La Família de Carlos IV (The Family of Charles IV).

Los Caprichos, GOYA

The eighty etchings that make up Goya’s most important series of prints, Los Caprichos (1799), have long been recognized as one of the supreme monuments of European art. The Caprichos are one of the most influential graphic series in the history of Western art and continue to inspire contemporary artists. The works continue to be as current today as they were two hundred years ago, perhaps because Goya lived in times of deep transformation and his work expresses contradictions not too different from those of our own times. The entire set of some 80 prints cover subjects of prostitution, child sexual abuse, witchcraft, numerous specific superstitions, and satiric critiques of doctors, politicians, and clergy, among others. Nearly half of the imagery concerns itself with witchcraft, often in a mocking tone that shows that Goya's use of this particular subject was meant to have more than just one single understanding for the viewer.

Goya in his life went through 3 different phases:

1- Tapestry

It is very colorful pretty much in a style of Rococo. Like Family the Carlos the 4^th and does not seem political.

2- His political style

The subject matter is more somber; the colors of his paintings are more grayish. Subjects are more political. The Third of May is a good example.

3-Black paintings

They are incredibly dramatic. There are 14 paintings. He lost his hearing and was deaf completely during this time. He was morbid that why he started to created those monsters paintings.

http://www.imageone.com/goya/saturn.html

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/G/goya.html

http://www.imageone.com/goya/

Baroque Period

The Baroque movement originated in Italy in the late1500’s (spanning through to the 1700’s) and was later accepted by France, Germany, Netherlands and Spain. This art period was a reaction against the formulaic Mannerist style, which was the dominant form during the late Renaissance. Baroque style is more realistic and emotional than the complex Mannerist style. The movement was greatly encouraged by the Catholic Church because it marked a return to tradition and spirituality.

Bold, curving forms, elaborate ornamentation, conspicuous use of decoration, sculpture, and color and overall balance of disparate parts characterize Baroque. The Aristocratic Baroque centered around three ideas: absolutism, academicism, and rationalism, and what are they?

Absolutism

Absolute monarchy or absolutism meant that the sovereign power or ultimate authority in the state rested in the hands of a king who claimed to rule by divine right. Late sixteenth century political theorists believed that sovereign power consisted of the authority to make laws, tax, administer justice, control the state's administrative system, and determine foreign policy. These powers made a ruler sovereign.

Absolutism argues that government was divinely ordained so that humans could live in an organized society. Of all forms of government, monarchy was the most general, most ancient, most natural, and the best, since God established kings and through them reigned over all the people of the world. Since kings received their power from God, their authority was absolute. They were responsible to no one (including parliaments) except God.

Academicism

The seventeenth century was a seminal period in the development of French culture Louis XIV acquired exclusive rights to a first painter who was a match for the grandeur of his aspirations. Charles LeBrun became the all-powerful, peerless master of seventeenth century French art. Le Brun certainly influenced French art, directing it toward the Grand Manner so favored by King Louis XIV. Le Brun was appointed the director of the reorganized Académie for what art historians call academicism or the control of artistic expression by an established academy. The Royal Academy became a system for insuring that the visual arts glorified the king. Its authority extended beyond just funding of the arts, and it educated artists only in the officially approved 'royal' style. A rigid set of rules dictated the instruction of practice and theory, with a strong emphasis on Classicism. Most important French artists of the next generation trained in his studio under the influence of Académie. This was in part because Le Brun appreciated talent and in part because there was little future for French artists who did not submit to the authority of Le Brun and the Académie. Le Brun proceeded in making the Académie an instrument for imposing his views and judgments onto French artists--largely theories based on Poussin, which had so influenced him. He codified a system of art and discouraged innovation and experiment. He promoted discussions over the relative merits of Rubensisme and Poussinisme and of course Poussin emerged the victor. Le Brun's lectures came to be accepted as providing the official standards of artistic expression. This was important because the crown was such an important element of patronage and so influential. Thus if an artist wanted to obtain lucrative commissions, he needed to conform to Le Brun's standards. Le Brun for his part was quite willing to conform to the King's tastes. He also strongly believed that artistic expression could be reduced to a series of rules and teachable elements.

Rationalism

Understanding the various forms of baroque art requires knowledge of its historical context. The 17th century could be called the first modern age. Human awareness of the world was continuously expanding. Many scientific discoveries influenced art; Galileo's investigations of the planets, for example, account for astronomical accuracy in many paintings of the time. The assertion of the Polish astronomer Copernicus that the planets did not revolve around the earth was only fully accepted after 1600. The realization that the earth was not at the center of the universe coincided in art with the rise of pure landscape painting devoid of human figures. The active trade and colonization policies of many European nations accounted for numerous portrayals of exotic places and peoples.

http://www.alifetimeofcolor.com/study/g_baroque.html

http://www.aspectart.com/movements/baroque.php

http://gallery.sjsu.edu/paris/the_academy/salon.htm

http://www.uib.no/ped/baroque.html

What Is Art?

Art is beauty. Art is a way of communicating with your soul. Art is incredibly subjective . Art is what your minds eye sees and understands and enjoys looking at it. The notion of the beauty is very important when we talk about art, so trying to take that notion of beauty instead of judgment put it into file, because we have to take a look at art without whether it is beautiful piece or not.

Art can mean transferring that special atmosphere that describes the ultimate thing (god, life, universe, spirit – whatever you call it). The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium. Art is hard to describe but you know it when you see it. Art may be painting, sculpture, photography, pottery, or mixed media.

However not all people can agree on art. Therefore it is very important to know at least the intention of the artist, and what objectives of that particular artist had in mind, and then we can start talking about it. They may try to transfer some political and social messages or objectives to their viewers. For example, some of the abstract paintings look like any kindergarten child could do that. Some one else can look at the same picture and see the use of color and form and grasp a concept that other can't. You can have your own opinion and interpretation on art but still needs to be based and sounded on particular content of particular artist. once again art is very subjective.

Calligraphy

Art refers to a diverse range of human activities and artifacts, and may be used to cover all or any of the art, including music literature, calligraphy and other forms. It is most often used to refer specifically to the visual arts, including media such as painting, sculpture, and calligraphy. Calligraphy is the art of beautiful writing. It is believed to be one of the most eyes catching and fascinating manifestation of art is calligraphy. Calligraphy has been considered among the artistic symbols, letters and elements, which form the word, always bear undeniable aesthetic qualities. Writing is the oldest mean through which man's spiritual and cultural acquisitions were transmitted from generation to generation. In the course of time, this art found applications in various domains, appearing as a decorative element on carved stone panels and monument facades, terra cotta vessels, wood, fabric and etc. for example, This is Persian calligraphy.

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/reference/f/what_is_art.htm
http://www.caroun.com/Calligraphy/aCalligraphyGeneral/HistoryIranCalligraphy.htm