The Female Figure

The female body as symbol of classical beauty & the ultimate art form

                     "The nakedness of woman is the work of God"                      
                                                                                                                  -William Blake

Influences of The Renaissance

Primavera, 1482
Tempera on panel
203 cm × 314 cm

The shift from the Medieval art during the Middle Ages where the Church was the main patron of art, to the Renaissance brought about much change where now wealthy patrons including noblemen, merchants and bankers began to commission works that escaped the rigidity of religious art.

As seen through the work of famous Renaissance artist’s including Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, the beginning of ‘modern’ science arose curiosity in the human figure and the rediscovery of beauty through the form of the human body. A sense of Humanism can be felt through the revival of the Classical Greek and Roman art through the Renaissance movement, which also laid down a new foundations for modern Western values and society with new ways of thinking and learning emerging.

Renaissance artists payed great attention into creating a sense of realism in their works emphasizing on linear perspectives, accurate proportions and three-dimensional modelling accomplished through their mastered techniques in painting with color and tone in order to create form.

The Birth of Venus, 1486
Tempera on canvas
172.5 cm × 278.5 cm

COMMENTARIES

‘The Nude remains a landmark (albeit an increasingly controversial one) in the description of the female body as art form. Indeed, for Clark the female nude represents the triumph of art: the ultimate transformation of matter into form. In these terms the image of the female nude is a pure form, one that, rather than provoking action, encourages contemplation, even reverence. To make his point Clark differentiates between the celestial and the earthly Venus. The former represents a perfection of the female form, so abstracted from sexual pleasure that it can sanction the male gaze and turns the female body into a work of art. The earthly Venus, by contrast, is warmly sensual, its wanton form always on the brink of immodesty. As such it is taken to be a less deserving object. Clark's statement is a classic example of the ways in which art criticism has sought to regulate the female form’.

Kenneth Clark's 1956

 ‘Clarke images the form as potential perfection’.

Robert W. Jones

The Nude

The Ancient Art of the Nude 
  

"Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is   condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress."

                                                                                            - John Berger

The Female Nude

How women are portrayed in art tells much about the status and roles of women in society and the place where men have positioned them.

The representation of the female figure can be traced back as far as the early prehistoric art. As seen in the image below of 'Venus of Willendorf ' 24000 - 22000 bce, the female figure was once used as a symbolic representation of fertility and life-giving.

The female nude in later periods of art became the subject for male consumption. Female nude during the Renaissance was often depicted in homage to Venus or Aphrodite, often seen lying naked in a landscape or domestic interior. They were largely commissioned by wealthy men of the period where they would have their mistress pose for the paintings and kept as a reminder of female submission to men.

'The Venus of Urbino', 1538 by Titian.

The Male Nude

The nude became significant in the art of Ancient Greece. The documentation of the male form was celebrated through the depiction of athletic competitions – where contests competed in the nude, battles and religious festivals in an unparalleled way. The Ancient Greeks deemed the male nude as the incarnation of all that was best in humanity, associating the male form – nude or otherwise – with power, triumph, glory, and even moral excellence. The image below demonstrates ancient Greek men competing in the Olympic games.

The shift to Greco-Roman art saw the depiction of the ‘perfect’ human form. The depiction of males was that of health, youth, geometric clarity and greatly influenced the depiction of the male form through out the Renaissance movement. 'Vitruvian Man'  1487 by Leonardo da Vinci is a great example of the 'perfect' male form depicted through his study of the proportions of the male human body. The impressive muscular physiques of the man has been well documented in the depicted warriors, hero's and gods in the biblical scenes of the Sistine Chapel. 

An Introduction to Museology - Elias Ashmole

Helloooo :)

As part of my course I will also be studying the history and background of museums and architecture/ art behind them.

Now I know this has nothing to do with my other posts but it all interweaves together and I love Elias Ashmole's work in general so here's an insight on his history and the similar interests that connect us to alchemy and its colorful distinguished art in its manuscripts.

• Elias Ashmole was born in Lichfield on 23 May 1617 and died in South Lambeth on 18/19 May 1692. 
• The 1640s saw a great revival of interest in the occult sciences (astrology, alchemy, natural magic), and Ashmole quickly assimilated the Neoplatonic–hermetic world-view within which the occult sciences seemed to have their natural place. But astrology was more than just an occult science: it could also be used as a weapon in a propaganda war.
• Ashmole also maintained a lifelong interest in various aspects of magic, especially in attempts to make spirits appear. Here the figure of John Dee, whose ‘conferences with angels’ had caused much scandal in Elizabethan England, loomed large. Ashmole collected Dee’s manuscripts, gathered all the information he could from Dee’s son Arthur, and planned a biography of the great magician. The biography never appeared, but the figure of Dee continued to haunt Ashmole for the rest of his life.
• Ashmole also became known, in his later years, as a great collector of manuscripts and other curiosities. His house at South Lambeth received visits from people such as Robert Hooke and Henry Oldenburg, often escorting foreign virtuosi. The collection of another antiquarian, John Tradescant, was also inherited after a lawsuit. Looking for a permanent home for these collections, Ashmole turned to the University of Oxford, offering to bequeath them to the University if it could find a suitable home for them. The University accepted the offer, and a fine new building was erected with a chemical laboratory in the basement, and display rooms above. The Ashmolean, England’s first public museum, received a royal visit in May 1683, and was opened to the public in June, with Dr Robert Plot as its first curator. 

The Ashmolean Museum has a medium sized collection of very good Pre-Raphaelite pictures, and there are various other places in Oxford to see their work.

The Ashmolean is one of the great museums in the world - and it can lay claim to be Britain's first official museum. Indeed, at the time of its founding, the term "museum" was unknown.

The Ashmolean was originally based on the idiosyncratic collection of natural history specimens collected by gardening pioneers John Tradescant (father and son). The Tradescants displayed their collection at their house in Lambeth, south London, but later deeded the curiosities to Elias Ashmole.

Ashmole in turn presented this jumble of natural and man-made oddments to Oxford University, where special buildings on Broad Street were created to house them. These buildings first opened their doors on May 24, 1683. The first Ashmolean was composed of three separate parts; the collection, a chemistry laboratory, and lecture rooms. The public was allowed to view the collection - a concession that irked some of the more supercilious academics of the period. The collection was enhanced by the addition of its prize possession, the Alfred Jewel, in 1718.

This Saxon relic is a gold-encrusted, enameled ornament intended to grace the end of a staff, or scepter. The association with King Alfred is uncertain, though the Latin inscription (which translates as "Alfred had me made") and the richness of the jewel makes it likely that only someone as powerful as Alfred could have been responsible for its creation. In the mid Victorian period the growing collection was split into natural and man-made divisions, with the former being used to create the new Oxford Museum of Natural History.

References:

www.ashmolean.org 

Artists on Film

Hellooo everyone!

This was the topic from one of my lectures that I had today and found it really interesting! Just wanted to share with you an insight of how films emphasis an artists background.

The main aspect was influencing ideas based on TV and films for artists this would include theater, opera, or even poetry.

The themes behind the popular backdrops are:

• Independence from patronage- breaking away from their primary fame and choosing independent solo careers.
• Voyeuristic feelings and emotions whilst sitting through the artists story.

From what I have learnt today 'Artists on Film' reinforces artists turbulent stories rather than the whole story put together in truth, and doesn't collaborate the audience with the film entirely, so what's the point?

In my opinion i'd rather read a couple of novel sources in order to understand the artists past life than working through a film of exaggerated and false interpretations just to sell the film to an audience.

Although on the other hand the film could very well be a visual representation of life at that time so its useful how a director can use knowledge, research, lighting, sets and actors to creatively interpret artists life on film.

Rembrandt 'The Night Watch' (1642)

Charles Laughton once again teams up with Korda for this moving, elegantly shot biopic about the Dutch painter. Beginning when Rembrandt’s reputation was at its height, the film then tracks his quiet descent into loneliness and isolated self-expression, following the death of his wife to the unveiling of Night Watch to the ecclesiastical excommunication of his late-in-life lover and maid, Hendrickje Stoffels. Though black and white, Rembrandt is shot by cinematographer Georges Périnal with an attention to light that’s particularly Rembrandtesque.

In the scene where Rembrandt presents his 'Night Watch' painting, that it is a nocturne Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenhurch, and not until late in the 18th Century did it acquire the name by which it is now known. Unfortunately, both "Night" and " "Watch" are wrong. The civic guards who are depicted had, by the time Rembrandt painted them, become quite pacific; it was no longer necessary for them to defend the ramparts of Amsterdam or to go out on watches by night or by day. Their meetings had been diverted chiefly to social or sporting purposes; if they may be said to have any particular destination in the painting, it is perhaps to march into the fields for a shooting contest or to take part in a parade.

As I could see from that clip not much art is shown which again proves that the film isn't really about the artist or their work.

It was by far the most revolutionary painting Rembrandt had yet made, transforming the traditional Dutch group portrait into a dazzling blaze of light, color and motion, and subordinating the requirements of orthodox portraiture to a far larger, more complex but still unified whole.

 In Rembrandt's hands what was, after all, a commonplace affair became filled with Baroque pictorial splendor, loud with the sound of drum and musket, the thud of ramrods, the barking of a dog, the cries of children. In the forefront Captain Banning Cocq - in black, with a red sash - and his lieutenant in yellow lead the forward drive of the still unformed ranks. 

The sense of movement is reinforced by converging diagonal lines: on the right, the foreshortened spontoon in the lieutenant's hand, the musket above it and the lance still higher; and on the left, the captain's staff, its line repeated above by another musket and the banner. 

The effect on the viewer is direct; he feels that he had best get out of the way.

Toulouse Lautrec- La Goulue (1892) Moulin Rouge

When the brassy dance hall and drinking garden of the Moulin Rouge opened on the boulevard de Clichy in 1889, one of Lautrec's paintings was displayed near the entrance. He himself became a conspicuous fixture of the place and was commissioned to create the six-foot-tall advertisement that launched his poster making career and made him famous overnight. 

He turned a spotlight on the crowded dance floor of the nightclub and its star performers, the "boneless" acrobat Valentin le Désossé and La Goulue, "the glutton," whose cancan skirts were lifted at the finale of the chahut.

In the scene you see straight away that its an alienated life separated from society, troubled by drink ( an exact description of an artists life stereotype) emphasis and exaggeration of Toulouse dying over a broken heart in the film whereas state of death was syphilis.

Soften light and heightened colours remind me of the vivid underworld nightlife of New Orleans bourbon festivals. The clip and the work conjure up leisurely wealth based around that time.

Again, left out the importance of the artists work and shown little reference of the Toulouse sketches for a brief number of seconds.

Camille Claudel 'Le Homme' (1893)

…MUSE AND MISTRESS. “MADEMOISELLE SAY”

Letter from Auguste Rodin to Camille Claudel, C.1886, [L.1451]

While Rodin recognized the young woman’s talent from the outset, he also fell in love with her almost immediately. The two sculptors’ complicated love story has inspired many overly romanticized interpretations.

This intense love affair, encompassing their personal and professional lives, inspired both artists, whose works functioned as declarations, criticisms or echoes of one another. 

Based on the artists life and what it was like in the 19th century for women artists. The scene showed Camille inspiring Rodin in the use of materials and her own intuition of concept life sculptures. (As seen in the pose of the woman in the film compared to the sculpture 'Le Homme' itself) although I must admit the sculpture looks more masculine than it does feminine.

After giving this lecture much thought I had come to the conclusion that  these films were not made for making money but that they were independent projects for catching artists stereotypical facts and proving them wrong critically.

Modern Art- A Critical Introduction

Helloooo,

A Critical introduction traces the historical and contemporary contexts for understanding modern art movements, and the theories that influenced and attempted to explain them. Its radical approach foregoes the chronological approach to art movements in favor of looking at the ways in which art has been understood.

In this post I will investigate the main developments in art interpretation and draw examples from a wide range of genres including painting, sculpture, photography, installation and performance art. 

Second week into my Art History course and I've come across many contemporary artists that I will critically analyse over the week (I will agree to disagree with anyone that doesn't favor my opinions: remember this is a public blog all criticism welcome.) 

Damien Hirst- 'Forms without Life' (1991)

‘Forms Without Life’ and ‘Life Without You’ are two early works incorporating different presentations of sea shells. Hirst originally intended them for inclusion in ‘Internal Affairs’, a series dating from 1991 shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Eventually, however, ‘Forms Without Life’ and ‘Life Without You’ were excluded from the auto-biographical series because he felt they were “too beautiful. Or the shells are anyway...

The piece characterizes an exhibition which asks us to play with the instabilities and openness of meaning, going beyond the surface to examine the multifarious range of unexpected interpretations gauged from a work of art.

Hirst’s quietly brutal commentary on mortality confounds. 'Life Without You' is nothing more than a simple ordering of beautiful shells on a table, yet the underlying sense of the transience of love seeps silently in.

Correct me if i'm wrong but my first impression of this piece was that it was a modern day context of curiosity; which made me believe that it associated itself with life beyond forms, such as habitat, purpose and protection. A form that holds life in relation to the shells at this present day.

Here's me babbling on quite a bit but I also thought that 'Life without you' was also afflicted with taking it out of its own world and bringing it into our own for our own desires and pleasures. Meaning that not only is this a pretty preservation of shells but that Hirst did this because he says and I quote "I like them because they once contained life." 

At first I thought how is this interpreted as art or a sculpture installation for that matter. Then once I started looking into what each object on the shelf could symbolize, it then became clear in discussion that it was assocated with a picturesque form of life that was once there. 

I must admit I'm not exactly a fan of Hirst's work but his interpretation of the "unacceptable idea of death" the experiences served to establish the difficulties he perceived in reconciling the idea of death in life. Of the prominence of death in his work (‘A Thousand Years’ (1990)) he has explained: “You can frighten people with death or an idea of their own mortality, or it can actually give them vigor."

I experienced this sculpture in 2012 at Damien Hirst's exhibition at Tate Modern in 2012. My first thought on this piece was vulgar. But obviously as I was open minded I looked into what his whole purpose into creating this and what his thoughts were at the time. 

In both works, the vitrine is split in half by a glass wall: a hole in this partition allows newly hatched flies from a box reminiscent of a die in one half, to fly into the other where an Insect-O-Cutor hangs. The corpses of the flies inside the vitrine accumulate whilst the works are on exhibition. In ‘A Thousand Years’, a decaying cow’s head is presented beneath the fly-killer. 

Hirst describes how, having come round to the idea of the validity of “new art” and having made the spot paintings and the ‘Medicine Cabinets’, he felt he had lost something, “in terms of the belief I had in whether [art] was real or not.” 

Feeling the need to make “something about something important”, and having already worked with flies, maggots and butterflies, whilst at Goldsmiths, he decided to create a “life cycle in a box.” The structure was partially inspired by American minimalism and the industrial materials Hirst had seen in the work of Grenville Davey and Tony Cragg. The shape of the vitrine drew from Francis Bacon’s technique of framing his figures within box shapes. Of the influence of Bacon’s frames to his work, Hirst has explained: “it’s a doorway, it’s a window; it’s two-dimensional, it’s three-dimensional; he’s thinking about the glass reflecting.”

Although admitting to having a “Frankenstein moment” of horror at the death of the flies, the use of living creatures enabled Hirst to incorporate an element of movement into the works. After studying Naum Gabo, Hirst found that the flies successfully satisfied his ambition to “suspend things without strings or wires and have them constantly change pattern in space”.

References: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/damien-hirst 

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/apr/02/damien-hirst-tate-review 

Welcome post :)

Hiya everyone!

Welcome to my blog! From those who follow my previous blog and know who I am and what I do, here's a little something about me:

• I'm currently a practicing artist/ painter
• On my way to becoming an Art Historian
• Curated and organised my first ever exhibition in June 2014 
• Crazed art lover

For those who would like to check out my other blog! Check out the link below:
http://nadinep-hjort.blogspot.co.uk/