1. OPERATION URGENT FURY II

2. Friday 4/15/16 Still Life in Studio – daguerreotype
The Stone Breakers – Courbet
Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art – Daumier
Olympia – Manet
The Valley of Mexico from the Hillside of Santa Isabel
The Horse in Motion - Muybridge

3. PHOTOGRAPHY: A NEW 19TH CENTURY ART FORM

4. (#110) STILL LIFE IN STUDIO
LOUIS-JACQUES-MANDÉ DAGUERRE, Still Life in Studio, Daguerreotype
One of the first plates Daguerre produced after perfecting his new photographic process
Still life inspired by painted still lives, like vanitas paintings
Variety of textures: fabric, wicker, plaster, framed print
New art form inspired by older art forms
Daguerreotypes have a shiny surface with great detail

5. Industrial Revolution brought extensive technological changes and increased exposure to other cultures.
Because of the rapidity of these changes, Western cultures developed an acute sense of the world’s lack of permanence.
The Darwinian idea of evolution and Marx’s emphasis on a continuing sequence of conflicts reinforced this awareness of a constantly shifting reality
Modernists artists sought to capture the images and sensibilities of their age. However, modernism goes beyond simply dealing with the present and involves the artist’s critical examination of the premises of art itself. Rather than the traditional approach of the academies where artists used art to conceal the medium, modernism used art to call attention to art -- the limitations that constitute the medium of painting (the flat surface, pigment, etc.)
REALISM
The Realists are generally seen as the first Modernist art movement. Realist artists argued that only the things people can see for themselves are “real.” “Show me an angel, and I’ll paint one.” Gustave Courbet, 1861
In scrutinizing the world around them the Realists expanded their repertoire of subject matter beyond established themes & embraced the mundane & trivial
1. Realism was a movement which developed in France around midcentury
2. Focus on everyday life
3. Disapproval of historical and fictional subjects -> these were neither real and visible nor of the present

7. (#113) THE STONE BREAKERS
GUSTAVE COURBET, The Stone Breakers, Oil on canvas, 5’ 3” x 8’ 6”. Formerly at Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (destroyed in 1945)
COURBET was a leading figure of the Realist movement
Realists portrayed objects and images that had previously been considered unworthy of depiction - > the mundane and trivial, working class laborers and peasants
Rural menial laborers -> young and old -> palette of dirty browns and grays -> not romanticized or idealized -> direct and accurate

8. JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET, The Gleaners, Oil on canvas, approx. 2’ 9” x 3’ 8”. Louvre, Paris
The hard lot of the country poor -> depicts the lowest level of country life was impoverished women -> picking up the remainders of grain in a field after the harvest
Many saw Millet’s sympathetic, quiet , and dignified portrayal of the poor as a political statement -> the prosperous classes reacted with disdain and suspicion

9. (#114)NADAR RAISING PHOTOGRAPHY TO THE HEIGHT OF ART
HONORÉ DAUMIER, Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art, Lithograph, 10 3/4” x 8 3/4”
The earliest photographic processes were the DAGUERREOTYPE and the CALOTYPE
Photography spread quickly and technological advance followed
The growing and increasingly powerful middle class embraced the new medium and its lower cost
The greatest of the early portrait photographers was Nadar
So talented was he at capturing the essence of his subjects that the most important people in France flocked to his studio to have their portraits made

10. ÉDOUARD MANET, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863
ÉDOUARD MANET, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), Oil on canvas, approx. 7’ x 8’ 10”. Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Edouard Manet was a pivotal figure during the 19th century
His work was critical for the articulation of Realist principles -> his art played an important role in the development of Impressionism in the 1870s
His masterpiece Le Dejeuner sure l’herbe outraged the public with its portrayal of a nude women sitting with fashionably clothed men in a Parisian park -> this was not a traditional pastoral scene
The style of the painting prompted severe criticism -> Manet moves away from illusionism -> he used colors to flatten form and draw attention to the painting surface
The style and the unorthodox subject matter made this work exceptionally controversial
EDOUARD MANET

12. ÉDOUARD MANET, Olympia, 1863. Oil on canvas, 4’ 3” x 6’ 3”
ÉDOUARD MANET, Olympia, Oil on canvas, 4’ 3” x 6’ 3”. Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Created a scandal at the Salon of 1865
Inspired by Titian’s Venus of Urbino and similar nudes by Goya and Giorgione
Figure is cold and uninviting -> no mystery, no joy
Olympia was a common “professional” name for prostitutes in the 19th century
Olympia meets the viewers eye with a look of cold indifference -> maid delivers flowers from a client
Shamelessness, moral depravity, race and racial divisions -> all of this made the painting explosive
(#115) OLYMPIA

14. (#118) THE VALLEY OF MEXICO FROM THE HILLSIDE OF SANTA ISABEL
Jose Maria Velasco, The Valley of Mexico from the Hillside of Santa Isabel, 1882, oil on canvas
Watch Khan Academy video
Panoramic landscape -> close realistic depiction of botany, geology, meteorological detail
Mother and child in the foreground -> they seem to be moving away from the city
In the background is Mexico City with receding remnants of the original lake, volcanoes on the far left

16. (#117) THE HORSE IN MOTION
EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE, Horse Galloping, Collotype print
Muybridge specialized in photographic studies of the successive stages of human and animal motion -> details too quick for the human eye to see
Modern cinema owes a great deal to his work
This sequence of photos was commissioned the Governor of California, Leland Stanford, (BOOOO!) about whether all four feet of a horse leave the ground while galloping