Otto Dix gained a reputation with his ghoulish and grotesque portrait paintings and visions of war. After serving in the first world war for Germany painting for him was as he states “Art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time,”. Dix also stayed in Germany during WW2, where he attempted to fly under the radar, and painted landscapes and christian themes in a traditional style to avoid the label of “degenerate art”. Dix was also heavily inspired by northern renaissance artists.

In his earlier ”Self-Portrait with Carnations” (1912), Dix had a brighter style. Dix also treated himself with respect and self confidence. This is unlike how he painted portraits of others, as he usually accentuates their worst features.

“The Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden” (1926) was an iconic image and one of Dix’s most recognized works. Dix had said that she was a perfect representation of society in that era.

“The Trench” (1923) was a piece that shocked many and launched a series of paintings of horrific scenery from Dix’s service from WW1.

“The Skat Players” (1920) also visualizes the tragedies of war with its subjects. Utilizing his dadaist and cubist influence to show veterans mangled and playing cards.

One Piece that I particularly like would be “Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas” (1924). The eerie atmosphere and the choice of mediums is oddly intriguing for a gloomy scene.

Sources:

• http://www.artnet.com/artists/otto-dix/
• https://www.theartstory.org/artist/dix-otto/artworks/#pnt_5

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 Gustave Moreau was very imaginative and fantastical in themes. He was a known symbolist painter from France. Moreau found his style with pieces that depicted mythical and religious themes with a heavy jewel like embroidered decorations. He set himself apart from the main movements of the era, realism and naturalism.

“Oedipus and the Sphinx” (1864) was the beginning of Moreau’s mature period. The piece gives a new interpretation to the scene of Oedipus on his journey to Thebes. He also emulates the early renaissance style in this piece.

“Orpheus” (1865) was a piece that gave Moreau much popularity. The piece itself gives no directness, instead it replies to your viewership with ambiguity and implied symbolism. It was also another piece where Moreau went back to Greek mythology for inspiration.

After two unpopular pieces, Moreau went to reassess his art and came out with “The Apparition” (1876). The piece gives no identified part of a story, as well as breaking away from the central figures of his past paintings.

Two pieces that I appreciate are the ornately decorated “Dream of the Orient of the Peri” (1826-98), and “The Fiancee of the Night” (1892). These pieces show his mastery of decoration through animals as well as on a dark backdrop.

Sources:

• http://www.artnet.com/artists/gustave-moreau/
• https://www.theartstory.org/artist/moreau-gustave/

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This survey, we are taking it back to Japan. Now, during this era, one of the biggest movements to come along was Japonism. The spread of Japonism gave the artists of the era a new perspective to look at the world from. Before the spread of Japonism, the only real way of looking at the world was from the point of view of the western Renaissance.

 Artists were attracted to the vivid colours, and the different perspectives of the Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. These aspects along with how unconventional, minimal, and yet realistic the prints were caused western artists to explore new ways of illustrating. These experiments led to new ideas within the realm of perspective. Some key artists that Japonism had influenced were Edouard Manet, Vincent Van Gogh, James Whistler, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, and Mary Cassatt. However I would like to focus on three artists this post, these artists being Van Gogh, Manet, and Degas.

Each one of these artists had a distinct style after being exposed to Japonism. Some traits that they have taken would be the flatter colours, strong colours, unusual spacing, everyday objects, detail from nature, exotic and beautiful atmosphere, the flat backgrounds or lack of depth, and the use of some more interpretive brush strokes. In Van Gogh’s life, he wasn’t very interested at first. However he came around to it later on and began collecting the prints. As he collected Van Gogh began to see the effects and techniques of the illustrations, these would be traits that he later took into his own paintings. Soon enough, Van Gogh had his flat colours and swirled brush stroke style. Degas’s inspiration took on some other aspects. His inspiration being the candid scenes, bare lighting or muted colours, intimate moments, and asymmetrical compositions, These can all be clearly seen when observing the work of Degas. Since Degas was also an impressionist, he wanted to capture moments in time. Therefore once photography was introduced, Degas’s works had his main inspirations for his style set. Lastly, for Manet, his work really grew beside Japonism. He was named the main draw for the modernist movement. For Manet the reason his works grew to be more well known was due to Japonism giving the west a new thing to accept. Therefore Manet was more so able to integrate the new style into his works as well. The main one being his new odd light source.

Sources:

• https://www.theartstory.org/movement/japonism/
• https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/stories/inspiration-from-japan?v=1#5
• https://michelinewalker.com/2013/07/08/manet-japonisme-and-modernism/
• http://covenantarthistory.blogspot.com/2016/04/degas-and-influence-of-japonisme.html
• https://www.theartstory.org/artist/manet-edouard/

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William Blake, the major poet, original thinker, printmaker, and prominent figure of the Romantic age. Blake received visions from a young age as well as having the bible engraved onto him, these became the main inspirations of his works. Other inspirations for his works were stories and scenes from other literary stories. 

One of Blake’s more well known works was “The Ghost of a Flea” (c1819-20), came to Blake during a seance. The mood of this painting is very bleak and nightmarish

An image that Blake loved was and made multiple copies of. “The Ancient of Days” (1795) depicts Blake’s personal myth of an evil god bringing uniformity. A very symbolic and dark piece

“Newton” (1795-c1805) is about Blake’s distaste of science as he depicts Newton in an isolated cold space.without much life.

In “Satan” (c1789) Blake was experimenting with echoppe needles, a french engraving method. The piece itself is very fine tuned and captures a tortured spirit well.

Sources:

• https://www.biography.com/writer/william-blake
• https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/nov/21/the-10-best-works-by-william-blake
• http://www.blakearchive.org/work/biblicaltemperas
• https://www.tate.org.uk/search?aid=39&type=artwork

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Note: Apologies for the late upload, during this time I was having troubles with logging into my account.

One piece of technology that The lithographic printer was a “great leap forward in printing technology”. Along with being the topic of survey 4, the lithographic printer had a wide variety of uses and functions, along with the advantage of being so far ahead of it’s time that it is still being used today.

The actual invention of the lithographic printer didn’t come from space, so how was it invented? It was all thanks to Alois Senerfelder, the son of an actor. Growing up, Senerfelder wanted to pursue theatre, however he had little talent for it, and his father wanted him to study law instead. But his love for theatre had not died yet, and he had found a home and success in writing plays. Senerfelder had many of his works published but unfortunately never made too much profit from it. Because of this, Senerfelder decided to find a more cost effective way of reproducing his work. This began with him attempting to produce his own copperplate engravings. A process that required time to master. However, because of this, Senerfelder decided that a better alternative to this would be to practice on Bavarian limestone. In addition to this, Senerfelder invented correction fluid to make sure that his finished engraving didn’t have any unwanted marks. 

The creation of these two caused an experiment of which seeing how ink and water repel each other, would easily be able to transfer an image from the stone. This chemical reaction would then be known later on as the ‘principle of lithography’. However because of the nature of this chemical principle, Senerfelder preferred to call it ‘Chemical printing’.

The final points about lithographic printing is that, after inventing it, Senerfelder devoted the rest of his life to the lithographic progress. Eventually, in 1817, Senerfelder was able to design a press with automatic process of wetting and applying the ink to the plate. This let Senerfelder become a recognized person among his contemporaries. Senerfelder died comfortably with the position of “Bavarian Royal Inspector of Lithography”.

Sources:

• http://sites.tech.uh.edu/digitalmedia/materials/3350/History_of_Litho.pdf

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Note: Apologies for the late upload, during this time I was having troubles with logging into my account.

Survey 3, the week of burning witches. For the ordinary citizens of the 15th century, most of the women lived in fear of being accused of being a witch as well as some men since they weren’t fully exempt of accusation either. Until the year that The “British Witchcraft Act” was passed, which was 1735, the church had spread the fear of witches across most of Europe and therefore caused a mass hysteria and many, many executions. 

Most of the accusations happened in parts of what is now, Germany, France, Netherlands, and Switzerland. The number of accusations during the 200 approximate years that the witch hunts went on are estimated to be 40,000 to 100,000 as stated in public records, however the amount of people accused that are unlisted could be up to three times as many. The majority of executions happened around the years of 1580-1650.

Now, how did people know to find witches? What did they do? At around 1450, a certain book was printed and published, this so called book was named the “Malleus Maleficarum”, this book was written or compiled by Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger. Another name it goes by is “The Hammer of Witches”. One of the reasons that it had become so widespread was because of the invention of printers, and so it was able to be mass produced and widely distributed compared to previous iterations of any witch informing piece of literature. The book was split into three sections that entailed believed practices, how they harm and prevention, and convictions. 

The thing about section 3 is that it was biased against the ‘witches’ from the beginning. The authors justification for these were to ‘protect’ the innocent from the devil. The section outlines that judges can lie to the accused by promising them ‘immunity’ if they confess, as well as keeping the identity of the accuser secret to the accused.

Sources:

• https://www.thoughtco.com/european-witch-hunts-timeline-3530786
• https://www.thoughtco.com/malleus-maleficarum-witch-document-3530785
• https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist257/stephwhit/final/malleus.html

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Note: Apologies for the late upload, during this time I was having troubles with logging into my account.

 My man, Caspar is a god at scenic landscapes. He was acknowledged as an important painter of the German romantic movement. His style is very dramatic and occasionally includes people. His works are more spiritualistic and contrasts the material world during an era where everyone had become too disillusioned to a material world. 

 As we begin a deep dive of his works we see how his first important painting was “maturity”(1808). It was met with quite some controversy as his use of landscapes instead of people for symbolism was unique and unnatural. Compared to one of his last pieces with a strong death symbol “Owl upon the Grave Marker”(1836-37). This piece was avoided for its strong symbols and not really noticed as well.

 The painting that got Caspar into the view of international buyers was “The Monk by the Sea”(1808-10). It was a minimalist masterpiece and caused many people to reevaluate themselves.

 One of the last paintings Friedrich made was “The Stages of Life”(1835) before having multiple strokes that left him barely capable of doing art. The painting is very cinematic and shows an allegory for the stages and the journey of life.

Sources:

• https://www.caspardavidfriedrich.org/
• https://www.theartstory.org/artist/friedrich-caspar-david/artworks/#pnt_4

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 The man known as Bartolome Estaban Murillo, was a good hearted man who later died months after a fight with twenty feet of gravity as well as a marble floor. He was an artist of the Baroque movement, and as such his subjects mostly contained religious themes as well as children. His style was mainly focused on naturalistic, mystical, idealized reality that was very intimate.

 The “Virgin of the Rosary”(c. 1650) was one of his relatively early works and shows his care into making the figures feel soft and inviting. It is also probably his best virgin and child paintings.

  A very masterful portrait was that of “Portrait of Don Justino de Neve”(1665), one of Murillo’s close friends and one who was vital in getting major commissions. As well as a painting with lots of Easter eggs and hidden meanings.

 “The Young Beggar”(c. 1645) was one of the pieces that showed how Murillo was unique in subject and portraying a quality level of realism. He also made these kinds of paintings specifically for foreigners.

 Some final paintings of Murillo were “The Two Trinities”(1675-1682) and the one that ended him “The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine”(1680-1682), which was completed by his pupil later on. Both of these have a strong religious theme and have a very strong use of light and dark. 

Sources:

• https://www.theartstory.org/artist/murillo-bartolome-esteban/life-and-legacy/
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bartolome-Esteban-Murillo

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