Category: 131 Survey & Principles of Illustration

Lisa Yuskavage is an American painter who is known for her female figurative paintings. She received her BFA from The Stella Elkins Tyler School of Art at Temple University and her MFA from Yale University’s School of Art. Then, she went on to exhibit her work in several places such as the Seattle Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Further, her work draws techniques from the high renaissance to depict these nudes. She combines this with a strong use of colour to demonstrate an overall mood. To continue, many critics have called upon the absurd proportions of these women. They state that her paintings set high expectations for what a women’s body should look like in this modern day. Yuskavage has responded by saying that she wants to invoke these reactions. She wants to create pieces that will produce different reactions to grab the attention of the audience. She also states that her paintings are supposed to seem anatomically impossible and are supposed to represent the far-fetched male sexual fantasies.

Overall, I am mesmerized by the work of Yuskavage. There is this fantastical quality to her pieces that draws my attention to her work. I wish I could see more representation in her paintings, particularly in body sizes. However, she has created this interesting concept with her inconceivable body proportions that adds an extra reason to admire her art. I think I’m also drawn into her work because she combines two different ideas in art: one that comes from the High Renaissance period and the other that feels more contemporary. Her work is ultimately a modern take on a classical part of art history.

Sources:

http://www.artnet.com/artists/lisa-yuskavage/biography

https://ocula.com/artists/lisa-yuskavage/

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/yuskavage-lisa/

Juan Gris was one of the leading figures in Cubist movement who followed Picasso and Braque. His original name was José Victoriano Carmelo Carlos González-Pérez and was born in Madrid in 1887. Further, he attended the Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas in 1902 until 1904 where he studied math, physics, and mechanical drawing. This academic life did not interest him and he decided to move further with his natural ability to draw. Once he left school, he decided to study under a prominent artist in Madrid, José Moreno Carbonero who also taught Picasso and Dalí. In 1905, the cubist artist changed his name to Juan Gris and moved to Paris in 1906 a little while after his father’s death. During his first few years in Paris, he worked as a cartoonist for several magazines and periodicals. However, once he met artists such as Picasso, Braque, and Matisse; Gris was motivated to work on his own paintings. He began to gear towards Analytic Cubism using monochromatic colours, linear grids, and geometric planes; but later on in his career he shifted to Synthetic Cubism and created his own personal and mature version of it. Overall, he moved on to influence some great artists that came after him such as Salvador Dalí.

Moreover, I am personally not a huge fan of cubism in general. I am a lot more mesmerized by paintings that are similar to reality or that show a looser version of it. When things become distorted, I become a little more hesitant to enjoy the scene that the artist has depicted, but I do respect their techniques and ambitions. Although I must admit, Juan Gris’ version of cubism is a lot more captivating to me than Picasso’s. For some reason, his compositions are a more comforting to me. I do appreciate and recognize that not many people can pull off cubism. I feel that if I were to attempt my own version cubism, I would not be as successful as Gris was. All in all, despite the fact that I am not fond of this area in art history, I do recognize that Juan Gris has a special talent that not many possess.

Sources

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Juan-Gris

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/gris-juan/life-and-legacy/

Eva Gonzalès was a french impressionist painter who typically portrayed contemporary Parisian life. Although Gonzalès was considered an impressionist, her pieces displayed a realist style and stayed within the confines of what was considered acceptable in academic salons. She began painting at the age of 16 by studying under Charles Joshua Chaplin. She was unable to go to the École des Beaux-Arts because female students were not allowed to attend at the time, but her high social status granted her enough financial resources to allow her to have this artistic career. A few years later, she met Edouard Manet who would soon be a major influence on her style of painting. Manet took her on as a student after she did some modeling for his work; but as time went on, her audience and critics criticized her for being overly similar to Manet.

Even though Gonzalès’ paintings were judged for sharing nearly identical characteristics with Manet’s work, I feel like they also have dissimilar qualities. I found that Gonzalès had a better depiction of the human face; whereas Manet’s faces look sort of distorted, especially in his painting, Woman Reading. Overall, I don’t think that she deserved the backlash that she received because there were tons of artists in art history who drew inspiration from other painters’ work. The important part was that she stuck to her own content, she never copied the work of her mentor. Finally, I personally love Eva Gonzalès’ work because of the fact that she had that realistic aspect while also having a looser characteristic to her art. I am particularly drawn to that type of work because I feel that it shows a special type of talent that I’ve only ever seen in Manet’s art.

“Summary of Eva Gonzalès.” The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/artist/gonzales-eva/. Accessed 29 October 2021.

“Eva Gonzalès.” Naomi Blumberg, Brittanica, 2016, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eva-Gonzales. Accessed 29 October 2021.

Antoine Watteau was born in a part of Flanders which France had previously dominated. He later moved to Paris where he studied under Claude Gillot. Gillot enjoyed painting theatrical scenes which inspired Watteau and his work. Further, Watteau would go to theatres and observe any details that would serve the scene of the play being shown. He was able to learn the effects of artificial light such as slight shifts in colour on costumes or painted backgrounds and the emergence of deep shadows. These observations in his work later got him accepted to the Académie Royale where he would be distinguished as an artist of fêtes galantes. Fêtes galantes was a term that described art that contained nicely dressed people (likely aristocratic individuals), typically in a park setting, that engaged in playful actions. Despite having only lived 37 years, Watteau became one of the greatest artists in the 18th century and had a significant impact on the beginning of the Rococo movement.

Overall, Watteau’s work fascinates me. Although I am not very fond of the artificial lighting he perceives in his paintings, I do adore the idea of a graceful world where “it never rains.” (Gombrich 454) In my opinion, it sends me into a fantasy where nothing terrible happens. There is no chaos, no war, no controversy. It feels like everyone is always content. Ultimately, I believe that his popularity in that period was well-deserved.

Sources:

“Antoine Watteau.” Britannica, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antoine-Watteau. Accessed 14 October 2021.

“Antoine Watteau (1684-1721).” The Met, 2003, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/watt/hd_watt.htm. Accessed 14 October 2021.

“Fêtes Galantes.” The National Gallery, https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/fêtes-galantes. Accessed 14 October 2021.

Gombrich, Ernst. The Story of Art. 16th Edition, Phaidon Press Inc, 1995.

Tintoretto is a Venetian mannerist painter who wanted to shy away from the bright colours being used in Venice during that time. Thus, he employed “weird light and… broken tones” to add a dramatic effect and an emotional strain (Gombrich, 371). Ultimately, he desired to be unlike any other painter in the late 16th century. Many, however, did not appreciate his attempt at uniqueness. Giorgio Vasari, a well-known critic, wrote that he could “‘have become one of the greatest painters seen in Venice,'” but because his paintings had an unfinished look, he was overlooked. Regardless, he never intended to have the same, clean finish that other Venetian painters had; he didn’t want the smooth finish to “[distract] our attention from the dramatic happenings of the picture.” The pencil marks he left on his completed paintings overall added to his intense portrayals of “legends and myths of the past.”

In my opinion, Tintoretto should have been considered as one of the greats. His paintings were incredibly different from any of the other mannerist paintings in Venice during the late 116th century. They demonstrated natural movement and liveliness, whereas models in other mannerist paintings seemed posed. Additionally, his pencil strokes were deliberately left to create a climactic effect; had they been there unintentionally, I would understand the argument of his supposed carelessness. Finally, when Gombrich stated that El Greco’s art “surpass[ed]” Tintoretto’s due to the “medieval ideas” that “lingered” in his work, I was shocked because I felt more inspired by Tintoretto’s work than I did by El Greco’s. Evidently, it is a subjective matter, but I believe that Tintoretto does an amazing job at creating complex and mesmerizing pieces.

Gombrich, Ernst. The Story of Art. 16th Edition, Phaidon Press Inc, 1995.