Visual Culture Notes

! Art History Main Questions ! How would you describe the objects? ! How would you respond to the authors' arguments? ~ If you do find an argument convincing, do you think it works for other periods or contexts? How might each of these objects illuminate (or not) particular historical questions or ! problems ~ What questions might you address to them? ! How might your knowledge of history illuminate (or not) your interpretation of the object? ! What actually constitutes the context of an object? ! Are any aspects of the objects not 'historical'? ! Are some kinds of objects more interest or important than others, historically or otherwise? ~ Within any one category, are some objects in particular more interesting or important than others? ! Do you find 'art' a useful concept for the historian? ~ In what respects is it not useful? ~ How about 'material culture' and 'visual culture'? ! ! Visual Culture Class Le Patrie en danger -- Lethiere (1799) ! Call to arms ! Time of national crisis ! Intensely political -- soldiers are saluting the French Republic ! Patriotic ! Women are involved in the war efforts -- have armfuls of muskets and swords --> stronger position for women than in ancien regime art ! Are saluting a statue of a woman representing France ! 'The fatherland in danger' -- Prussia have joined Austria against France ~ Statement unites the people ! 1793 -- called for the mobilisation of the entire country for the war ! Peter Burke's idea of the eyewitness -- not how people actually looked but how people viewed the situation ~ More prescriptive than descriptive ! Greek and Roman society are idealised ! Marxist -- social, political and economic ! Nietzsche -- art and western civilisation --> struggle between rigid morals v. the chaotic, debauched and fundamentally more creative ~ Spectator was Apollonean -- sterilised art ~ Artist himself was Bachean or Dionysian ! Duty and fighting for the fatherland ! Black soldier -- showing emancipation of slaves --> virtue of the Republic ~ Beyond national boundaries -- values and classical cultural heritage ! Lethiere is painting propaganda -- was commissioned to paint the ideals of the French Revolution ! So detached from reality as to not show cultural memory? ~ Was intended to make cultural memory ! Fountain -- Marcel Duchamp (1917) ! From France but it was made in the USA ! Rejected from exhibition ! December 2004 -- voted most influential artwork of the 20th century ! Not high art -- has a social function --> this is why it is important ! Response to modern industrialised culture ! Part of the avant--garde movement ! Political message ! Avant--garde is a benchmark ~ Cannot move forward --> replication ~ Cannot move backward --> retrospective Ready--made item ! ! Is it a rejection of everything before or just garbage? ~ Can it have any continuity with the past? ~ In mocking the past you are still part of a progression Anti--institutional accepts that there is an institution ! ! ! Benjamin -- once you reproduce something you lose control of it ! ! ! ! ! ~ Yet Duchamp himself commissioned replicas Mockery of classical statues? 1920s art -- much looked 'wrong' --> following the dislocation of WWI Roman Capriccio -- Panini (c. 1740s) ! Fictionalisation of what Rome looked like -- brings many different objects together ! Not self--evidently abstract -- attempting to be visually realistic ! Not for a universal audience -- made for an English audience who have visited Rome and want something to take back ~ Vision and souvenir of Rome ! Against the accuracy of previous landscapes ! Something with a nice aesthetic ! Potential message of doing away with material possessions ~ Boy drinking from the fountain throws away his cup ! Baxandall -- maybe we cannot access its meaning anymore ~ Representing an aesthetic idea about Rome ~ What is beauty? ! Not going to be hung in a gallery ~ Souvenir for private collectors ~ Now out of its original context in the Ashmolean ! Part of the Grand Tour -- demonstration of wealth ! Guernica -- Picasso (1937) ! Town in the Basque region of Spain which was bombed in 1937 ~ Began painting 6 days after the bombing ! Bull and horse appear earlier in Picasso's work ~ Can be seen as nationalism and republicanism Painting was about the 'forces of darkness' ! ! Bull is also a symbol of the Basque Country ! Historical context of Guernica but also the climax of all of Picasso's work ! Horse throughout art has always been a symbol of power ! Mademoiselles d'Avignon -- distortion of the representation of women ! Cubism shows how perceptions can be altered ! Creates comic strip of Franco sitting on a phallus ! Wounded horse represents Spain -- Franco is the bull ! Straining towards the light -- artificial lightbulb --> modern world and warfare ! Guernica was a non--military target which was devastated ! Biographical -- grotesque images of women ! Culmination of the avant--garde movement ~ Yet it was deliberately political -- was it pantomime? ~ Does it lose its true meaning from being political? ! Not necessarily avant--garde ~ Common theme of the massacre of the innocents ! Does it transcend its historical context? ! ~ Not all concepts are shared in ~ Yet the concept of human suffering can transcend historical context La Maraichere -- Jacques--Louis David (1789) ! Made at the time it was meant to portray ~ About the Parisian rebellion and the Bastille ~ The situation was still changing and fluid Painted for a private collection ! ! Not a classical portrait ~ Egalitarian mood -- women could participate ! Women is wearing the tricolour colours and has defensive body language ~ Viewer will be a different social class ! Fear for the future? ! Vulgarity of the revolutionaries ! Could be anyone ! 'Woman of the people' -- emergence of the idea of the citizen ! Rise of the common people yet duty comes with this ! Yet in another sense women do not get equality -- no vote ! ! David -- gains favour with Louis XVI ~ Paints Enlightenment values ~ Neo--classical tradition ~ Key theme of women being excluded ~ Different to this portrait which glorifies women ! Return to revolutionary ideas -- wishes to ingratiate himself ! This woman is not named -- epitomises a wider movement of empowered citizens ~ Changed depiction of women to fit the political context She is not directly engaging with the spectator -- looking up ! ~ Arms can seem to show indifference ! ! Difficulty of accessing the meaning of different culture ! ~ Focus towards modern art ~ Yet have to analyse it within a framework of art itself ! Similar to other historical sources in a way ! ! ! Are people using the idea of art to discuss other issues? ! Propaganda -- useful term ! ~ Anything that influences opinion -- almost all art comes under this ~ Every piece of art tries to influence people -- does the term become diluted? ~ Cannot be used for everything ! Does the intention of the artist matter? ~ Can we over--analyse items? ! Object can be the solution to a problem ! ~ Why solve a problem in this particular way ~ Need for authorised duplicates of Duchamp's fountain ! The meaning is not necessarily the object Gendering Art and Its Histories ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Is gender an approach in its own right? Edouard Manet -- 'Olympia' (1863) => feminist approach Gender v. sex Sexual orientation is culturally represented *> Diane Arbus -- 'Seated man in bra and stockings' (1967) Feminist approach of 1970s -- revival of the past *> Ancient times -- writers such as Pliny wrote about female artists 16th century -- Vesari's Lives of the Artists *> Women are included - Yet they are as an exception to prove the general masculine rule Elizabeth Vigee--LeBrun -- Marie Antoinette's favourite painter Yet seen more as a leisure activity than a career *> Sidetracked by other roles such as wife and mother ! ! Early 20th century -- women seemed to disappear from the discipline ! Gombrich's The Story of Art -- influential survey => no women *> No woman had been 'important enough' to go into a one volume book Feminist re--evaluation -- part of a political agenda ! *> Griselda Pollok -- this 'first wave' of feminist art history was closely connected to a contemporary radical political agenda ! 1972 'Old Mistresses' exhibition -- art is gendered masculine => canon of the 'Old Masters *> No female equivalent ! ! Assumption that women did not have innate genius *> e.g. Vesari *> Coming from a family of artists and going to art school was very important e.g. Picasso -- would this have occurred if he were a girl? Many female artists are from artist families ! *> Angelica Kauffmann -- family with no sons ! 1772 -- 2 women admitted to the Royal Academy *> After this, there were no other women until 1936 Johann Zoffany -- 'The members of the Royal Academy' (1772) ! *> Includes a man from a different race *> Women are in portraits on the wall - Cannot be in the room -- women were barred from achieving greatness => necessary to paint nudes ! ! 1971 -- Linda Nochlin -- 'Why have there been no great women artists?' *> Tries to remove the idea of genius -- needed a social and familial basis - Masculine *> Feminist critique can reveal biases in art *> Catalyst and intellectual instrument for questioning *> Simply inserting women artists into the art historical canon was unsatisfactory - Should question why women have been excluded in the first place ! ! Marie de'Medici -- patron of art *> Difficult to devise appropriate iconography *> Woman as seductive Venus v. chaste virgin ! Rubens -- 'Icon of the Madonna held aloft by angels' (1608) and 'Venus at her mirror' (c. 1616) *> Painted many portraits of her Marie's gaze looks out -- power of her gaze ! *> At a time when there was an issue of the seductive female gaze -- she is criticised for this when she is no longer in power ! ! ! ! ! Beholder of art -- male and heterosexual *> Woodcut by Durer -- 'Man drawing a nude woman through a grid' (1525) - Scientific precision of male work - Female form as passive recipient -- probing male gaze 'New Art History' and feminist developments in psychoanalytic theory in the later 1980s and 90s => focus on women as patrons and beholders of art and as objects of the implicitly male, heterosexual gaze *> Possessive heterosexual gaze Objectification of female subjects Laura Mulvery -- 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' (1975) => influenced Kruger and Sherman ! ! Robert Doisneau -- 'Un Regard Oblique' (1948) *> Woman's gaze is denied -- visual joke that she does not know what her husband is looking at ! Cindy Sherman -- 'Untitled Film Still #21 and 56' (1978--80) *> Worried woman on filmstrip *> Evocation of cliched Hollywood films -- in response to article on gendered assumptions - Idealised male viewer - 2 gazes fall on the woman -- the men in the film and the men watching the film => scopophilia Love of looking ! Barbara Kruger -- 'Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face' (1980) *> Mute female sculpture => shouts back ! ! Eduoard Manet -- 'Dejeuner sur l'herbe' (1863) *> Woman looks back *> Nudity contrasts with dressed men ! ! Walker Evans -- 'Annie Mae Gudger' (caption: Alabama, sharecropper's wife) (1936_ *> Meets gaze directly *> Yet the caption describes her as the poor wife of a sharecropper - Defined in relation to her husband => less assertive Rephotographed by Sherrie Levine -- 'After Walker Evans' (1981) ! *> Subtly different *> Female beholder ! 

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