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- Bird in Space
- Artist: Brancusi
- Era: Organic Sculpture
- Techniques:
- abstract columner form tapered at both ends
- idea of a bird about to soar
- essence of bird in motion
- significance of line
- high polish and molding
- shine makes the viewer's eye move - motion is constant- abstraction of movement
- fill the viewer with comfort and piece
- Project of bird which when enlarged will fill the sky - subtitle
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- Oval Sculpture (No. 2)
- Artist: Hepworth
- Era: Organic Sculpture
- Techniques:
- plaster cast, off of earlier wooden sculpture
- pierced in 4 places
- holes and volumes of white plaster
- basic and universal form - express a sense of eternity's timelessness
- about nature and landscape - how landscape is defined by mass and space
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- Three Forms
- Artist: Hepworth
- Era: Organic Sculpture
- Techniques:
- flat oval, vertical oval, and sphere
- spatial relationships are as important as shapes
- size and space represents and relationship
- mother of triplets
- standing form, closed form, and 2 forms go back to quote
- timelessness and eternity
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- Reclining Figure
- Artist: Moore
- Era: Organic Sculpture
- Techniques:
- death is presented to us in his skeletal pieces
- life is presented through reclining female figures
- sexulatiy presented through holes in sculptures
- suggests surrealist biomorphic form
- resembles landscapes after water
- allusion to the cavities in nature, caves
- "hole connects one side to the other, makeing it immediately 3d" and "mysterious caves"
- continuom of line to outline the figure
- female reclining figure - powerful earth mother
- undulating lines
- hollows suggest nurturing human energy
- physical and psychological strength of women - upright torso and head
- organic vocab central to his philosphy
- reference to death with skeletal sturcute
- dynamsim and evocative nature
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- Untitled
- Artist: Calder
- Era: Organic Sculpture
- Techniques:
- series of balanced structures hanging from rods and wires
- colored organically shaped plates
- air currents cause structure to shift and dance in space
- clouds, leaves, and waves blown by the wind
- shapes derived from circles and ovals
- lines suggests nerve axons
- plates are like cells
- also resemble fins or wings - biomorphic forms
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- The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti
- Artist: Shahn
- Era: Art as Political Statement in the 1930's
- Techniques:
- flat intense colors
- sharp dry angular forms
- tall narrow painting that compresses time and space in a symbolic representation of the trial and its aftermath
- Sacco and Vanzetti in coffins
- Harvard university president cleared way in middle
- schematized building- framed portrait of judge, Theair, who pronounced original sentence
- stylized mas
- like faces
- three live people are more mask-like - mocking piety of mourning
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- Guernica
- Artist: Picasso
- Era: Art as Political Statement in the 1930's
- Techniques:
- response to bombing of the city of Guernica
- Spanish republican govt exiled to Paris and asks Picasso to paint
- "painting is to attack and defend to the enemy" kind of - Picasso
- bulls symbolize struggle
- organize figures in to three parts
- triangular center section
- 2 rectangular flanking sides
- human forms bend and stress in response to emotional stress
- all of nature is destroyed
- bull represents the homeland and the brutality and darkness of society
- balloon shaped head and arms holding oil lamp - symbol of hope
- shallow space
- open window provides hope
- light symbolizes holy spirit
- light on top looks like eye of god
- patterns of light and dark - different types of paper pasted together
- delineates hair on horse which is an allusion to newsprint
- woman screaming to heavens is allusion to Virgin Mary and Christ
- stretched limbs and fragmented bodies
- visual form of suffering
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- The Worker and the Collectivce Farm Worker
- Artist: Mukhina
- Era: Art as Political Statement in the 1930's
- Techniques:
- glorification of communal labor of the Soviet people
- using realism to express the exemplars of Soviet citizenry
- male factory worker holding a hammer
- female farm worker holding a sickle
- solid figures striding forward
- sickle and hammer are Soviet flag
- clothing blowing in the wind - progression
- realism in the power of sculpture
- national symbol
- rounded and volumed figure
- cubism - sectioned together
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- Migrant Mother
- Artist: Lange
- Era: Depression Era
- Techniques:
- Nipomo Valley
- soft focus
- strength and worry
- resting head on hand
- young mother with such concern that she looks older
- baby in lap with two children turning faces away
- photography serves three purposes
- objective documentary - emotionally neutral record of the subject
- human documentary - stir human emotions about the conditions portrayed
- social documentary - arouses emotions but chooses subjects so that enlightened action that could change the situation
- Lange specializes in human documentary - but this one is social
- after publication, food was rushed to hungry
- pride and dignity of woman
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- Nighthawks
- Artist: Hopper
- Era: Depression Era
- Techniques:
- sometimes Modernist and Regionalism
- quiet still, large empty spaces
- stopping motion and suspending time
- lighted interior of a cafe through huge plate glass window - inner space connecting to outer space
- creates paradox of people inside because they feel safe but they are vulnerable because glass is fragile
- safety and vulnerability
- small figures and large empty space - compositions of Poussin
- indifference of characters to each other
- each one has loneliness even though they share space
- independent figures
- straight forward mode of interpretation
- quietness resembles Eakins and Tanner
- simplifies shape
- city life is abstracted
- long drawn out shadows
- regular paintings - lots of patterns
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- Epic of American Civilization: Hispano-America
- Artist: Clemente
- Era: Mexican Muralists
- Techniques:
- panoramic symbolic history of mexico
- satiric vision of modern education
- monumental figure of a heroic peasant armed to participate in Mexican Revolution
- mounds of crammed symbolic figures oppressing him
- money grubbers poor gold at the feet of the uncorruptible
- cannon threatening him
- general raising a dagger to stab him in the back
- framed wall surface
- architecture painted in
- collapsing building in background classical and modern
- school teacher leading a line of children
- graduation in death
- allegory
- newspaper artis's
- political cartoon
- graphic and mural media effect
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- Ancient Mexico
- Artist: Rivera
- Era: Mexican Muralists
- Techniques:
- fresco
- series that lines a staircase
- depicts conflicts between indigionous and Spanish colonists
- important figures in history of mexico and its independence
- complex decorative and annimated mural
- Mexican folklore
- simple and monumental shapes of body colors even for figures
- figures are a little more rounded
- multiple figures behind them
- people sitting amongst huge flowers, simplified
- nude or into traditional clothing the women are
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- American Gothic
- Artist: Wood
- Era: Regionalism
- Techniques:
- oil on beaver board
- farmer and his spinster daughter in front of neat house
- title because of lancet windows
- apron trimmed with rick rack
- dower expressions which gives the painting a severe quality
- wood enhances the brushstrokes
- painting captures spirit of America "quaint, humorous and American"
- "strength, dignity, fortitude, resoluteness"- critic
- Iowa is being insulted
- stanch nationalism instead sympathy for Midwestern life
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- Pioneer Days and Early Settlers
- Artist: Benton
- Era: Regionalism
- Techniques:
- white man using whiskey as a bartering tool on left with native
- building of Missouri on right
- artists perceive this as glorying Midwestern life but distorting aims
- criticizing the past and looking forward to future
- rubbery figures
- angles and perspectives are off
- cross over panels
- images from literature like Huck Finn
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