Art and Text in Azteca Mexico

First, on Monday we will begin with the Ghanan fantasy coffins and photographs by Seydou Keïta that we did not discuss last Thursday. They're  at the top of this post. 

Map of globe asia centered

Map of globe during last ice age

Please read all the instructions before you begin, as it's a slightly different approach that asks you each to focus on one work. 

Next, please read this post that introduces many themes in Mesoamerican art. Focus on the work by the Aztecs. 

Quickly but closely Read this post and view the video at the top.  

I would like each of you to choose one work from either of these posts to study closely, as you did with the Italian Renaissance works I assigned to you. Describe it in terms of form, content, iconography and/or historical contexts. Can you think of a connection between the work you chose and another work from a different place that we have studied this semester? 

The works you choose will become the key works, and I will take notes and bring images of them into this post. I will take the last segment about Ancestral and Supernatural forces in the Caribbean, so you should not choose from that segment. 

No one should choose the TEMPLE MAYOR OF TENOCHTITLAN, because it features so clearly in the second reading/viewing.  

Art, Adornment and Identity in Africa

Ngwane I, Olso, 2018. From the series Somnyama Ngonyama. Site-specific photographic mural, dimensions variable. Source.

Seydou Keïta, Untitled, 1956–57, gelatin silver print, 39.1 x 55.2 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

 

Olowe of Ise, Veranda Post of Enthroned King and Senior Wife (photo: Dr. Delinda Collier, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Stylistic Analysis and physical context here. 

Drawing by Ataa Oko, 2009 source

Kente Cloth, Ghana

The King has Boarded the Ship (Asante kente cloth), c. 1985, rayon (collection of Dr. Courtnay Micots)

Figural design (detail), Ewe kente cloth, 1920–40 (Ghana), cotton, 339 x 198 cm (© The Trustees of the British Museum, London)

El Anatsui, 'In the World But Don’t Know the World', 2009. More here.

Seydou Keïta more

Yinka Shonibare CBE, The Swing (after Fragonard), 2001, mannequin, cotton costume, 2 slippers, swing seat, 2 ropes, oak twig and artificial foliage, 330 x 350 x 220 cm (Tate, London) © Yinka Shonibare more

Going for Baroque-- class Sep 21

Let's see if we can pick up the pace and cover the Sistine Chapel, Titian's Venus of Urbino, and Botticelli's Birth of Venus,  plus begin to dive in on all 6 the key works for today -- it's too much for today, but it may be that we are all in the mood to cover more quickly than we were Thursday the 17th!! 

It's too much, and if we dive too deeply into some key works I will cut the others from your 'to do' list. 

Transition comparison and contrast-- Renaissance to Baroque: 

Left: Raphael, Madonna of the Goldfinch, 1505–6, oil on panel, 42 x 30 " Uffizi, Florence; right: Peter Paul Rubens, Assumption of the Virgin Mary, 1626, oil on panel, 16 feet  x 12'cm, High Altar of the Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, Flanders, Belgium

Baroque: first truly global style. As a result of colonization, the spread of Catholicism, and trade, materials, objects, and artists moved across distant geographies yet were more interconnected than ever before.... yes, but

Baroque A style characterized by realism, dramatic light/dark contrast, and complex compositions. It affects the emotions and activates the viewer’s space.

    Traits: drama, movement, energy, complexity, return to the horror vacui / “ornamental fervor.” recognizable in Byzantine art

Baroque: 17th and much of the 18th centuries in a broad range of geographies across the globe

(barrôco in Portuguese, barrueca in Spanish) describing a specific type of irregular pearl: in other words, a natural but artificial-looking, precious but misshapen object.

17th century fascination with science and discovery led to many varied 'advances' -- maybe rapid transformations is a more helpful term-- in painting in particular. Emphasis on close observation. and new tools to enhance that capacity-- lenses and cameras, for example-- changed the kinds of realism that painters sought. 

"Musei Wormiani Historia", the frontispiece from the Museum Wormianum depicting Ole Worm's cabinet of curiosities

A corner of a cabinet, painted by Frans II Francken in 1636, reveals the range of connoisseurship of a Baroque-era virtuoso.

Other terms: 

Genre, genre painting, portrait, still-life, history painting, chiaroscuro, tenebrism, theatricality, cabinet of curiosities (wunderkammer)

Week 4

6 Additional Key Works for Monday, 9/21–just begin to sketch notes on these; I understand that they  may not be complete in your notebook All key works are discussed in the reading for Monday which is here.  

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Las Meninas, c. 1656, oil on canvas, 125 1/4 x 108 5/8″ genres: portrait, genre, still life, history painting, Order of Santiago

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1620–21, oil on canvas, 162.5 x 199 cm

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, 1622–25

(just a preview! we will discuss this on Monday the 28th together with Caravaggio!)
Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, 1664, oil on canvas, 42.5 cm × 38 cm
Willem Kalf, Still Life with a Chinese Bowl, Nautilus Cup and Other Objects, 1662, oil on canvas. 79.4 x 67.3 cmRembrandt, Self-portrait of the artist in his Studio, c. 1629, oil on canvas,  (9.8 in × 12.5 in) 

Velasquez's painting is 10' tall. Rembrandt's is 1' tall

Judith Leyster, Self-Portrait, c. 1633, oil on canvas, 74.6 x 65.1 cm

Source-- more great images

 

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, 1647–52 (Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome)

Saint Teresa was born a Spanish Aristocrat She experienced spiritual visions, which she described in detail in her  autobiography The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus.  She became a religious reformer and founded the Discalced Carmelites order. 

Venetian Cardinal Federico Cornaro (1579–1653) commissioned the sculpture in the burial chapel of church home of an order of Discalced Carmelites. 

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa depicts the vision where her heart was pierced with an arrow by an angel with an arrow. She wrote that she saw an angel close by her on her left side, in bodily form. “He was not large, but small of stature, and most beautiful–his face burning, as if he were one of the highest angels, who seem to be all of fire; they must be those whom we call cherubim."  

“I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God.”  

The sculpture exists today as a beloved and despised emblem of the Baroque era. 

Peter Paul Rubens, Elevation of the Cross, from Saint Walburga, 1610, oil on wood, center panel: 15′ 1-7/8″ x 11′ 1-1/2″ (now in Antwerp Cathedral)

Incan Potato Varieties

Basilica of Saint John of God in Granada was built in the mid-1700s (1737-1759) during the height of the Spanish Baroque period

Caravaggio, Calling of St. Matthew, 1599–1600

Left: Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1598–99, oil on canvas,  Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1620–21, oil on canvas, 

Cabinet of Curiosities-- and The Fig as an Example toward Theme Research Presentations

curiosity

pretty

dreams

power dynamics/politics

postmodernism

mythology, nature and how elements can have personality

how gods' traits developed

portraits/self-portraits

sacred/mystical and how it can divide or unite

soulhood

fake/realism/illusionism and the few marks needed to make something appear real, perspective

Architecture?

Vis ARt in relationship to interior design and architecture

Color- use of color

Greek & Roman Art

religious iconography

AI/tech

street art, esp. during wartime

 

Ficus carica, or, llustrating your Theme Assignment with a fruit that happened to come up on day 1. 

Trew, C.J., Plantae selectae quarum imagines ad exemplaria naturalia Londini, in hortis curiosorum nutrit, vol. 8: t. 73 (1771), drawing by G.D. Ehret Source: wikipedia. Art or not art? 

\

Clara Peeters, Mesa, Flemish, 1611 (seventeenth century still life), oil on panel, ~ 20" x 29"

I was well aware that the fig appeared in a lot of mediterranean art, and had loved on some flemish still lives with dried figs.... which offers some clues into trade, wealth, diet, desire, and representation (and probably much more that I need to think about and research. 

Yesterday gave me a first glimpse at the Fig's fruit as a theme in art history that can help me understand an element of cultural significance. 

Nebamun’s garden, Tomb-chapel of Nebamun, c.1350 B.C.E., 18th Dynasty, paint on plaster, 64 cm high, Thebes, Egypt © Trustees of the British Museum

Ishtar took the form of the divine fig tree

Figs are often linked with female sexuality

Gautama Buddha achieved enlightenment under a Ficus religiosa, 

Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment (bodhi) after meditating underneath a Ficus religiosa, which produces small purple fruit, and has significance in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism

In Islam

Sura 95, "the Fig" in the Qur'an, opens with an oath on the fig, 

"In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful.

By the fig and the olive.

 And Mount Sinai.

And this safe land.

We created man in the best design.

 Then reduced him to the lowest of the low.

 Except those who believe and do righteous deeds; for them is a reward without end.

So why do you still reject the religion?

Is God not the Wisest of the wise?

In Judaism and Christianity, well, what did Eve and Adam do to after eating from the tree of knowledge (which some figure as a fig) We could go on at length here.... figs in Christian art.... what do you know or can you guess?

Artist unknown, "The Monkey Escapes to the Safety of the Fig Tree", illustration from a book of fables,  Kalila wa Dimna, traced to a late medieval Islamic kingdom in India, the Sultanate Gudjarat. 

Hildegard of Bingen freely prescribes figs for the infirm, but restricts their consumption by the healthy. The warning she appends to her discussion may derive from the fig’s association with temptation and sin in the Christian Middle Ages:

The fruit of this tree is not good for a person who is physically healthy to eat, since it affords him pleasure and gives him a swelled mind. He will seek honors and tend toward greed, and will have changeable morals, so that he does not remain in one state of mind. . . . It irritates his humors to evil, as if it were their enemy. . . . If a healthy person wishes to eat it, he should first soak it in wine or vinegar, so that its inconstancy is tempered. He should then eat it, but in moderation. (Physica, XIV)

(For more information on Hildegard of Bingen and Physica, see “Mutter Natur,” October 10, 2010.)

Peter Paul Rubens, Romulus and Remus, (whom farmers found under a fig tree), 1615-1616, oil on canvas, (83 in × 83 in) Location Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome

Pierre Bonnard, Plate of Figs, ~1923

Albert Kechyan, Figs, 2019