ARTHI 6C Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Charlottenburg Palace, Fop, Augustus Ii The Strong
HOMEWORK: Assignment due next week in section
Don’t need to memorize artists, names, dates, or places
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Academy: Art institution that educated artists, regulated style, and held
exhibitions promoting the visual arts
Term comes from 18th century developed art institutions
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Gabriel Jacques de Saint-Aubin -The Salon of 1765
Hierarchy - status of high and low
If your work is really good according to the French government, it
gets the highest hang on the salon wall
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Work is ranked based on how it is hung on the wall (top = best,
lower = lesser)
§
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Hierarchies of Genres in the 18th Century
Genre: style or type of artwork
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Hierarchy: ranked system of classification (French govt.)
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Below is the hierarchy established in the French academy (top to bottom)
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History painting: highest genre of painting; depicted religious, military,
historical, and mythological subjects
Paintings that required knowledge of the past
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Most intellectual form
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Classical Rome, Greece, etc.
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Metaphorical and allegorical paintings
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EX: Jacques-Louis David Oath of the Horatii
Ultimate history painter of the French Revolution
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Documented battles seen around him through metaphors and
allegories, not blood and gore
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Employs ancient mythology to demonstrate bravery in war
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Very large canvases 11'x13'
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1)
Landscape
2)
Portraiture
The only place where women could enter the academy
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EX: Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun -- Self Portrait in a Straw Hat
Becomes the only woman member of the French Royal
Academy
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Also the most famous court portrait painter□
She painted the Portrait of Marie Antoinette with Her Children
1787
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Patronage: paid commissions for art objects by wealthy and/or
influential people
Usually portraits□
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3)
Still-life4)
Genre painting
Domestic scenes: people in their homes, people playing music, etc.
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Inside paintings with no large social commentaries
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5)
Decorative painting and decorative arts
Fine arts are visual art objects with no functional purpose except to
be admired and contemplated as an aesthetic object:
Painting□
Sculpture□
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Decorative arts: visual art objects that also serve a useful function:
Furniture - sometimes with porcelain inlay□
Tableware□
Textiles□
Glassware□
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Design conveys multiple meanings:
The preparation of instructions for the production of
manufactured goods
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The arrangement of lines and shapes to create patterns and
decoration
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The way an object looks as a result of its making (i.e. good
design, well-designed)
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Porcelain, watercolors, mostly done by women
Porcelain: a white ceramic material heated to a high
temperature that produces an object of great hardness,
translucency, and strength
Early porcelain was developed in China during the Han
Dynasty
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Techniques to manufacture porcelain were held as royal
and state secrets by the Chinese Imperial Court who
invented the process
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Soft-paste porcelain: a lower quality clay blended with
ground glass and soapstone, fired in a kiln at 2192
degreed Fahrenheit
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Hard-paste porcelain (aka True porcelain): a higher
quality clay blended from kaolin (CONTINUE)
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Known throughout Europe as "white gold"
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Took tremendous attention and labor to produce
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Porcelain is political
Showcases status and wealth
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Social hierarchy = systems of authority
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i.e. Lady with a Blackamoor (1737) by Joachim Kandler
White lady being waited on by a black man
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Porcelain Room at Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, Germany
1713
Augustus II the Strong (Saxon, 1670 - 1733)
The ruler that had porcelain developed under his
rein
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Represents status, technology (porcelain and
mirrored glass), and consumption (public display
of economic power and taste)
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Meissen Porcelain Manufactory founded in
Germany in 1710
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Chinoiserie: European interpretation and imitation of Chinese
and East Asian artistic traditions
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Sevres Porcelain Manufactory - French porcelain factory
1756 -Present
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Sevres Porcelain potpourri burner
Porcelain connected with female identity
Because it is pink and very useless
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Very beautiful, fragile, in the domain of the
domestic sphere
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Performance of domesticity
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Dangers of porcelain consumption (outlined by political
cartoons in 1746)
Fop (homosexual) if you spend too much time buying
and looking at porcelain
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Sexually insatiable women
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The exotic as erotic
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Porcelain and the emerging middle class (in addition to
female identity)
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Neoclassical: artistic movement and style that develops in the
late 18th century across Europe and North America…
neoclassicism was a return to classical forms of art and motifs
Rejection of frivolousness of France and Germany
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Much more affordable to the middle class in Britain
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Mass production in factories (technology, marketing
techniques, strategies of display -- rotating display
windows)
Josiah Wedgewood's molds and displays
Used his manufactory to become an activist
and circulate political ideas (more political
propaganda than an art form)
}
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House Museums - how decorative arts are typically displayed
Historic House Museum: a house that has been transformed
into a museum where historical functions are displayed in a
way that reflects their original placement and usage in a
home
i.e. the White House, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello
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6)
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Lecture 2: Technologies of Domesticity
Thursday, April 5, 2018
10:48 AM
Document Summary
Don"t need to memorize artists, names, dates, or places. Academy: art institution that educated artists, regulated style, and held exhibitions promoting the visual arts. Term comes from 18th century developed art institutions. Gabriel jacques de saint-aubin - the salon of 1765. If your work is really good according to the french government, it gets the highest hang on the salon wall. Work is ranked based on how it is hung on the wall (top = best, lower = lesser) Below is the hierarchy established in the french academy (top to bottom) History painting: highest genre of painting; depicted religious, military, historical, and mythological subjects. Documented battles seen around him through metaphors and allegories, not blood and gore. Employs ancient mythology to demonstrate bravery in war. The only place where women could enter the academy. Ex: elisabeth louise vigee-lebrun -- self portrait in a straw hat. Becomes the only woman member of the french royal.
