What follows are some notes I took down while studying for the final exam of University of Guelph’s ART*1520 Art Historical Studies II, instructed by Chandler Kirwin in winter 2005. Each semester, he tends to present the same slides and content, so someone may find this info useful if their Google skills don’t fail it. Page numbers are from Marilyn Stokstad’s Art History, Volume Two, revised second edition. It’s probably on revision twenty nine by now.

• Title: Boy with a Basket of Fruit [p735]
  Artist(s): Caravaggio
  Date: 1593
  Significance: Self-portrait and an example of still life and half-length figure.
• Title: The Calling of St. Matthew [p736]
  Artist(s): Caravaggio
  Date: 1600
  Significance: Example of his tenebrism and Jesus’ outstretched arm recalled Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel.
• Title: Entombment [p737]
  Artist(s): Caravaggio
  Date: 1603
  Significance: Recalls Michelangelo’s early Pieta sculpture but it is animated more.
• Title: Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting [p738]
  Artist(s): Artemisia Gentileschi
  Date: 1630
  Significance: Commemorates her profession and pays tribute to her father.
• Title: Water Carrier of Seville [p753]
  Artist(s): Diego Valázquez
  Date: 1619
  Significance: Mathematical arrangement and dramatic natural light.
• Title: Les Meninas (The Maids of Honor) [p754]
  Artist(s): Diego Valázquez
  Date: 1656
  Significance: Court portrait (including ourselves as the King/Queen) and his self-portrait proclaim the dignity and importance of painting as a liberal art.
• Title: Captain Frans Banning Cocq Mustering His Company (The Night Watch) [p768]
  Artist(s): Rembrandt van Rijn
  Date: 1642
  Significance: Group portrait as drama and also uses Caravaggio’s tenebrism techniques.
• Title: Self-Portrait [p770]
  Artist(s): Rembrandt van Rijn
  Date: 1659
  Significance: Shows humility and frailty of the human condition.
• Title: View of Delft [p775]
  Artist(s): Jan Vermeer
  Date: 1662
  Significance: Used camera obscura as a tool to analyze a landscape rather than reproduce it.
• Title: Woman Holding a Balance [p776]
  Artist(s): Jan Vermeer
  Date: 1664
  Significance: Focuses on the act of weighing and judging; The Last Judgment in the background.
• Title: Chateau of Versailles [p739]
  Artist(s): Philibert Le Roy (old chateau) and Louis Le Vau (new chateau), André Le Nôtre (garden), Charles Le Brun (interior)
  Date: 1661-1785
  Significance: Built to express the power of Louis XIV’s monarchy; mathematics as the basis for beauty.
• Title: Palais du Louvre [p704]
  Artist(s): Pierre Lescot
  Date: 1546
  Significance: Remodeled castle into an art gallery, housed the Salon for exhibits.
• Title: Oath of the Horatii [p932]
  Artist(s): Jacques-Louis David
  Date: 1784
  Significance: Neoclassical painting, men sacrifice themselves for the state, women to family ties.
• Title: Death of Marat [p933]
  Artist(s): Jacques-Louis David
  Date: 1793
  Significance: Reductive neoclassical style with Caravaggesque naturalism. Opposed the King of France.
• Title: Napoleon Crossing Saint-Bernard [p944]
  Artist(s): Jacques-Louis David
  Date: 1800
  Significance: Exaggerates Napoleon’s abilities: he can direct the wind, rides a horse not a donkey, leading troops across the Alps to Italy.
• Title: Napoleon in the Plague House at Jaffa [p945]
  Artist(s): Antoine-Jean Gros
  Date: 1804
  Significance: Example of Romanticism, Napoleon as a Christ-like figure healing with the plague victims with a touch.
• Title: Arc of Triumph [p952]
  Artist(s): Francois Rude
  Date: 1806
  Significance: Celebrates Napoleon’s many victories and gives rise to French patriotism. Centre of the star in Paris’ city plan.
• Title: The Sleep of Reason [p954]
  Artist(s): Francisco Goya
  Date: 1798
  Significance: Monstrous characters represent the horrible nature of Spain’s reinstitution of the Inquisition and ban of French books. Investigates self and the loss of meaning when there isn’t a focus on the divine or monarchy.
• Title: Third of May [p955]
  Artist(s): Francisco Goya
  Date: 1815
  Significance: Christ-like figure in the centre, focusing on the heinous mechanics of war.
• Title: Raft of the Medusa [p948]
  Artist(s): Théodore Géricault
  Date: 1819
  Significance: Humanity that connects these people, even the slaves. Muscular bodies on those that should be diseased and starved.
• Title: The Haywain
  Artist(s): John Constable
  Date: 1821
  Significance: Naturalist Romantic landscape paint of a British location.
• Title: The Fighting “Téméraire,” Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up [p957]
  Artist(s): Joseph Mallord William Turner
  Date: 1838
  Significance: Represents the fading of British rule, naval ship off into the sunset.
• Title: Slaveship
  Artist(s): Joseph Mallord William Turner
  Date: 1840
  Significance: Sublime, dramatic representation of a wrecked shipped, its passengers drowning.
• Title: The Crystal Palace [p968]
  Artist(s): Joseph Paxton
  Date: 1850
  Significance: Built for the London Great Exhibition, largest building in the world at the time. Made use of pre-fabrication and incorporated natural forms (trees were indoors).
• Title: The Artist’s Studio [p965]
  Artist(s): Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre
  Date: 1837
  Significance: First true photograph taken, a daguerreotype. Positive image.
• Title: A Real Allegory
  Artist(s): Gustave Courbet
  Date: 1855
  Significance: Portrait of modern painters (as Ralphael’s School of Athens), Baudelaire can be seen at the side writing representing the role of the critic.
• Title: Portrait of Charles Baudelaire [p967]
  Artist(s): Nadar
  Date: 1863
  Significance: New true portraits possible by photography, exact reproduction of nature.
• Title: The Luncheon on the Grass [p981]
  Artist(s): Édouard Manet
  Date: 1863
  Significance: Figures unnaturally stand out from the landscape, reinterpretation of Titian/Giogione’s Pastoral Concert. Upper-class men with prostitutes.
• Title: A Bar at the Folies-Bergère [p990]
  Artist(s): Édouard Manet
  Date: 1882
  Significance: Skewed perspective in the mirror. Depressed, disconnected barmaid and her desire for happiness and intimacy.
• Title: Boulevard des Capucines [p983]
  Artist(s): Claude Monet
  Date: 1874
  Significance: Done in Nadar’s studio, immediately representing naïve form rather than the objects.
• Title: Impression, Sunset [p979]
  Artist(s): Claude Monet
  Date: 1882
  Significance: Painting that bound the term “impressionism” with the Parisian movement.
• Title: Rouen Cathedral: The Portal in the Sun [p992]
  Artist(s): Claude Monet
  Date: 1894
  Significance: Further abstraction from previous work, capturing the effects of lighting and atmosphere.
• Title: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte [p996]
  Artist(s): Georges Seurat
  Date: 1886
  Significance: Divisionistic technique (dots) used, rigid formal style recalls ancient art.
• Title: The Starry Night [p997]
  Artist(s): Vincent Van Gogh
  Date: 1889
  Significance: Another divisionistic technique (multi-dimensional dashes) adds dynamic energy to the stars (where people will continue their lives), exploring immortality.
• Title: Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
  Artist(s): Vincent Van Gogh
  Date: 1889
  Significance: He cut his own fricken ear off!
• Title: Night Cafe
  Artist(s): Vincent Van Gogh
  Date: 1888
  Significance: Another skewed perspective, uses the dashed-technique, explores colour.
• Title: Eiffel Tower [p940]
  Artist(s): Gustave Eiffel
  Date: 1889
  Significance: Built for the Universal Exposition and represents the genius of modern science; humanity reaching for the heavens.
• Title: Self-Portrait
  Artist(s): Paul Cézanne
  Date: 1885
  Significance: Deconstruction of self.
• Title: Still Life with Basket of Apples [p994]
  Artist(s): Paul Cézanne
  Date: 1894
  Significance: View of objects from multiple angles, actual natural form no longer matters.
• Title: The Large Bathers [p995]
  Artist(s): Paul Cézanne
  Date: 1906
  Significance: Elongated bodies, not done based on models, rather from memory, drawings, and photographs.
• Title: Monte Sainte-Victoire [p993]
  Artist(s): Paul Cézanne
  Date: 1887
  Significance: Exploration on three dimensional space based on a mountain near Aix, unified surface design.
• Title: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon [p1034]
  Artist(s): Pablo Picasso
  Date: 1907
  Significance: Early example of Cubism, masks from ethnographic exhibit, kept in his private collection.
• Title: Still Life with Chair Caning
  Artist(s): Pablo Picasso
  Date: 1912
  Significance: Ambiguity in “jou”: could be day, journal, games, etc. Used found objects such as the framed rope.
• Title: Guernica
  Artist(s): Pablo Picasso
  Date: 1937
  Significance: Like Gros’ Third of May, speaks out against the atrocities of war, but specifically this is against carpet bombing done in Spain.
• Title: Improvisation #30 [p1029]
  Artist(s): Vasily Kandinsky
  Date: 1913
  Significance: Uses sheer force of colours to evoke emotions rather than the symbolism within.
• Title: Compositions with Yellow, Red, and Blue [p1052]
  Artist(s): Piet Mondrian
  Date: 1927
  Significance: Deconstructs and dematerializes art done to its basic forms: lines and colour. Tried to find objective art.
• Title: Fountain [p1062]
  Artist(s): Marcel Duchamp
  Date: 1917
  Significance: Makes people question just what art is. Reversed urinal signed by a play on words of the manufacturer.
• Title: Mona Lisa
  Artist(s): Marcel Duchamp
  Date: 1919
  Significance: Dada-ist example, easily manufactured post-card.
• Title: Bicycle Wheel
  Artist(s): Marcel Duchamp
  Date: 1913
  Significance: Assisted readymade example, anonymous, common objects placed together.
• Title: The Persistence of Memory [p1065]
  Artist(s): Salvador Dali
  Date: 1931
  Significance: Surrealist example, the drag of time in modern times on our consciousness. Ants represent death, feasting on metal. Disparate realities.
• Title: Object
  Artist(s): Meret Openheim
  Date: 1936
  Significance:
• Title: Lobster Trap and Fish Tale [p1076]
  Artist(s): Calder
  Date: 1939
  Significance:
• Title: Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)
  Artist(s): Jackson Pollock
  Date: 1950
  Significance: Action painting, gesturalism
• Title: Dinner Party [p1126]
  Artist(s): Judy Chicago
  Date: 1979
  Significance: Feminist art, names of famous females, sitting together in equilateral triangle (female symbol), 13 per side (recalling The Last Supper).

Baudelaire and Modernity:

Baudelaire argued … that painters should paint figures in contemporary dress, rather than in archaic costumes from the past, and that the contemporary, in all its diverse and fleeting guises, had a heroic or epic dimension. Baudelaire’s idea of modernity was not merely a question of being up-to-date or subject to swiftly changing fashions, although these were symptomatic of a modern type of experience. It claimed that the modern in art related to the experience of modernity, that is, to an experience which is always changing, which does not remain static and which is most clearly felt in the metropolitan centre of the city. As soon as we try to pin modernity down or define it in a simple formulation, we risk losing this sense that it is, by definition, constantly subject to renewal, that it marks out shifting ground. For Baudelaire, new subjects required a new technique; just as there were appropriate forms that the modern in art could take, so too there were inappropriate forms.

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