Vasari

 

Vasari.. Italian painter, architect and writer. 

Vasari, born July 30, 1511, Arezzo [Italy]—died June 27, 1574, Florence), Italian painter, architect, and writer who is best known for his important biographies of  Italian Renaissance artists.  

When still a child, Vasari was the pupil of Guglielmo de Marcillat, but his decisive training was in Florence, where he enjoyed the friendship and patronage of the Medici family, trained within the circle of Andrea del Sarto, and became a lifelong admirer of Michelangelo. As an artist Vasari was both studious and prolific. His painting is best represented by the fresco cycles in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and by the so-called 100-days fresco, which depicts scenes from the life of Pope Paul III, in the Cancelleria in Rome. Vasari’s paintings, often produced with the help of a team of assistants, are in the style of the Tuscan Mannerists and have often been criticized as being facile, superficial, and lacking a sense of colour. Contemporary scholars regard Vasari more highly as an architect than as a painter. His best-known buildings are the Uffizi in Florence, begun in 1560 for Cosimo I de’ Medici, and the church, monastery, and palace created for the Cavalieri di San Stefano in Pisa. These designs show the influence of Michelangelo and are outstanding examples of the Tuscan Mannerist style of architecture.  Encyclopedia Brittanica. 

The artist at home: Casa Vasari's Hall of the Arts complete w/ various allegories & ancient tales of great painters. All by & for Giorgio Vasari, born on this day in 1511.

Vasari’s fame rests on his massive book Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani… (1550, 2nd ed., 1568; Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1850–52, trans. of the 2nd ed.), which was dedicated to Cosimo de’ Medici. In it Vasari offers his own critical history of Western art through several prefaces and a lengthy series of artist biographies. These discussions present three periods of artistic development: according to Vasari, the excellence of the art of classical antiquity was followed by a decline of quality during the Dark Ages, which was in turn reversed by a renaissance of the arts in Tuscany in the 14th century, initiated by Cimabue and Giotto and culminating in the works of Michelangelo. A second and much-enlarged edition of Lives, which added the biographies of a number of artists then living, as well as Vasari’s own autobiography, is now much better known than the first edition and has been widely translated.

Homage of all the peoples of the world (plus giraffe, & other beasts) to Lorenzo the Magnificent, as painted by Giorgio Vasari.

Vasari’s writing style in the Lives is anecdotal and eminently readable. When facts were scarce, however, he did not hesitate to fill in the gaps with information of questionable veracity. His bias toward Italian (and more specifically Tuscan) art is also undeniable. Despite these flaws, Vasari’s work in Lives represents the first grandiose example of modern historiography and has proven to be hugely influential. The canon of Italian Renaissance artists he established in the book endures as the standard to this day. Moreover, the trajectory of art history he presented has formed the conceptual basis for Renaissance scholarship and continues to influence popular perceptions of the history of Western painting. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/vasari-giorgio/

Six Tuscan Poets, c. 1544. From left to right: Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti.

Alessandro De Medici 

A section from the Salone dei Cinquecento in Florence

Ceres

 

A History of the World in 5 Nudes

What 40,000 years of art reveals about us...

CULTURE CRITIC JUL 27 ∙ PREVIEW

What do our clothes really cover? When we remove them, what is revealed? 

Nudes are among the oldest and most ubiquitous forms of art that human culture has created, but they vary widely from era to era. 

These five pieces tell the story of nude art — and, more importantly, the story of the cultures that created them…

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The Venus of Hohle Fels

The story of nude art begins with the oldest undisputed depiction of a human form: a 40,000-year-old statue discovered in the Hohle Fels cave of Germany. 

Known as the Venus of Hohle Fels, the carving is a visceral, yet compelling depiction of a female body. Its exaggerated feminine characteristics indicate that it’s a celebration of fertility, likely worn as an amulet or used in religious ceremonies.

The unabashed nudity of the Hohle Fels Venus connects human fertility to the fecundity of the natural world, which, in early cultures, was inseparable from the activity of gods and goddesses. This early sculpture reveals a world in which the power of divine beings was visible in the cycle of seasons, the hunting of prey, and the human body alike. 

The Venus de Milo

By the 2nd century BC, artists had learned to smooth out the rough edges of their carvings. The raw harshness of the Hohle Fels Venus gave way to the pristine perfection of the Venus de Milo.

The statue is thought to depict the goddess Aphrodite holding the golden apple of discord, which was awarded to her by Paris for being the most beautiful goddess — this event is known as the “Judgement of Paris”, and is what kicked off the events of the Trojan War. Though the statue’s arms are now missing, the figure’s graceful pose, cascading drapery, and classical features have made it an icon of beauty through the ages. 

Instead of depicting its deities as animals or natural elements, Greek tradition anthropomorphized its gods, presenting them in human form. Statues like the Venus de Milo confirm the connection between the human body and the divine, an ever-present consideration in Greek society.

Botticelli’s Birth of Venus

The rise of Christendom brought an emphasis on physical modesty to the Western world. Christian tradition eschewed nudity in art for almost 1500 years, making Botticelli’s Birth of Venus virtually the first nude painting in Christendom. 

As the Renaissance began to blossom, Botticelli — along with the rest of Europe — turned to the pagan roots from which Christian culture sprung, hoping to reclaim the glory of the Greco-Roman world and integrate it into the Christian one. This included the pagan tradition of representing the unclothed human body. 

Botticelli, however, nuanced the pre-Christian connection between nudity and divinity. Instead of emphasizing the body’s connection to the natural world or sexual desire, he hoped to portray the beauty of the human form in a way that would allow the viewer to contemplate the beauty of God. Following in his footsteps, cherubs, nymphs, and classical figures would soon dance across Renaissance canvases everywhere, seeking to reclaim nude art from the taboo of paganism.

Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe

The Renaissance successfully reintegrated nude art into the Christianized West, but these nudes were generally limited to mythological figures, such as goddesses and heroes, who transcended everyday life. 

The art world reeled in shock, then, when Edouard Manet debuted his 1863 piece entitled Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (“Luncheon on the Grass”). Depicting actual women in an everyday setting, the painting took nudity out of the realm of mythology and placed it in the realm of the real. Though the garden-like context and graceful poses of the women harken back to paintings of Greek nymphs, the contrast between the mythological elements and the matter-of-fact nudity only sharpened the shock.

Manet’s painting was one of the first nude works to disconnect human nudity from transcendence, and the artistic establishment of the time resolutely rejected it. The nude women no longer stood in as images of primordial goddesses or beautiful nymphs — instead, they simply represented themselves. 

Marilyn Monroe in Playboy

Only 90 years after Manet published his painting, Playboy published its first issue. The cover promised a full-color nude photo of Marilyn Monroe, and the centerfold delivered. 

The photograph is iconic of the 20th century’s explosion of explicit images. From films to advertisements to books, sexual imagery began to saturate mass culture. 

While humanity has been creating nude images for tens of thousands of years, this type of art represents something distinct from the mainstream art that preceded it. Classical nudes considered the mystery of the human body and saw it as a doorway to the divine. Modern photographs, on the other hand, showed bodies for the purpose of sexual enjoyment — or in other words, pornography. 

This chapter of nudity disconnects the human body from higher meaning. A nude body on the pages of Playboy exists to appeal to the viewer’s physical desires and make a profit, rather than to inspire or ennoble. 

(Un)clothed in Mystery

But the story of nude art is nothing less than the story of how we see ourselves. Some nude works demonstrate that, beneath the everyday trappings of life, human beings are images of the divine…...

Judy Chicago. Pioneering Feminist Artist

Small, feisty and dynamic, Judy Chicago was one of the pioneers of Feminist art in the 1970s, a movement that endeavored to reflect women's lives, call attention to women's roles as artists, and alter the conditions under which contemporary art was produced and received. In the process, Feminist art questioned the authority of the male-dominated Western canon and posed one of the most significant challenges to modernism, which was at the time wholly preoccupied with conditions of formalism as opposed to personal narrative and political activity. 

Seeking to redress women's traditional underrepresentation in the visual arts, Chicago focused on female subject matter, most famously in her work The Dinner Party (1979), which celebrates the achievements of women throughout history, scandalizing audiences with her frank use of vaginal imagery. In her work, Chicago employed the "feminine" arts long relegated to the lowest rungs of the artistic hierarchy, such as needlework and embroidery. Chicago articulated her feminist vision not only as an artist, but also as an educator and organizer, most notably, in co-founding of the Feminist Art Program at Cal State Fresno as well as the installation and performance space, Womanhouse.

Her gender politics, sometimes abrasive, forceful personality and focus on sexual imagery to represent women, as well as bringing to the fore the millions of women who have been written out of history are as controversial now as they were in 1979. There still seems to be little understanding of the complexities of the 70's and feminist art is STILL "written out" or seen as marginal or irrelevant. What's the famous quote - those who don't know history are domed to repeat it? Unfortunately, the younger generations of feminists are, by and large, ignorant of their own foremothers and waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel.

in a recent interview, she went on to say, “What I have been after from the beginning is a redefinition of the role of the artist, a reexamination of the relation of art and community, and a broadening of the definitions of who controls art and, in fact, an enlarged dialogue about art, with new and more diverse participants.” 

 

Because feminists had (and have) an interest in challenging elitist systems of value, the fact that the Dinner Party was visually inaccessible for most of the last two decades speaks volumes about the place of feminist art. The use of the female labia and the central iconography of the piece speak to the need to examine it as a serious work placed with its historical setting with ramifications beyond the 70’s. Berger’s theory on the gaze is as relevant then as now – the difference between the naked and the nude. The Dinner Party’s pudenda imagery is nothing if not naked, proudly and defiantly so, and all the more “shocking” because the piece was created by a body of (mostly) women, using the “womanly” crafts of pottery, china painting and embroidery. Portrayals of male and female genitalia abound in art but as part of a larger image; this was the first time that the part that had discretely veiled was so openly displayed without apology. 

I remember when I first saw it. The amount of women’s history presented there was overwhelming and I filled a notebook with names to research. Plate after plate of women’s names and achievements, most of whom had been written out of the history books, were handed to us on a plate, as it were. I did think at the time that not all the pieces were visually successful which is logical in a project of this size and complexity. But I also thought – then and now - Dear god, how many years must we talk about her "quality of work." the woman made history - did what no man has (and never could) done. But that's not enough! We must go back to the question if we "like" it or not. We have to discuss if it’s high brow enough or skilled enough (although in what way skilled? By whose standards?)

 

To those who criticize, I want to say, “Do you like every guy in art history?” There are whole genres of art out there that I do not care for, but I never attack, attack, attack and question it and rip it to shreds with a dismissive "it's lousy.” It doesn't matter whether we like Chicago or not. Her influence is immense.

 

Men are now claiming craft and communal art making and embroidery and all the rest of it. It's big in the art news. Just about every week we have a new man coming into town to talk about craft. Now these men have taken the (traditionally) women's art and make great speeches and made it all their own. No one is saying the quality of work is shit or that it's just fucking embroidery. When women made quilts, they were just quilts, but when men make quilts they get hung in the Museum of Modern Art. Funny huh?

Degas

 First the basic facts:   Edgar Degas, in full Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, De Gas later spelled Degas, (born July 19, 1834, Paris, France—died September 27, 1917, Paris), French painter, sculptor, and printmaker who was prominent in the Impressionist group (although he rejected that title, preferring to be called a "realist.") Widely celebrated for his images of Parisian life. Degas’s principal subject was the human—especially the female—figure, which he explored in works ranging from the somber portraits of his early years to the studies of laundresses, cabaret singers, milliners and prostitutes.  

Ballet dancers and women at their toilette would preoccupy him throughout his career. Degas was the only Impressionist to truly bridge the gap between traditional academic art and the radical movements of the early 20th century, a restless innovator who often set the pace for his younger colleagues. Acknowledged as one of the finest draftsmen of his age, Degas experimented with a wide variety of media. Due to his failing eyesight, both his subject matter and technique became simplified in his last decades. Once marginalized as a “painter of dancers,” Degas is now counted among the most complex and innovative figures of his generation, credited with influencing Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and many of the leading figurative artists of the 20th century.

Born in Paris, Degas always remained a proud Parisian, living and working in the same area of the city throughout his career. Though detailed knowledge of his middle-class family is limited, it is known that they maintained the outward forms of polite society and falsely believed that they were related to minor aristocracy. The family was also prosperous enough to send Degas to a leading boys’ school, where he received a conventional classical education. His mother died when he was 13 years old, leaving three sons and two daughters. Knowledgeable about art but conservative in his preferences, Degas’s father helped to develop his son’s interest in painting and in 1855 encouraged him to register at the École des Beaux-Arts under the supervision of Louis Lamothe, a minor follower of J.-A.-D. Ingres. Like many young artists, he left school to study on his own. He traveled to Italy where he studied Michelangelo, Titian, and especially Ingres whose linear delicacy he admired while also being drawn to the more flamboyant style of Delacroix. 

Although he was in New Orleans for only five months, he came at a seasonally spectacular time for the city, being there during All Saints and All Souls Days celebrations and leaving just after Mardi Gras. Furthermore, he also was in the city at a historically pivotal point for the country, as the United States itself was changing, and for the city of New Orleans, with its unique melting pot of sociopolitical and racial culture was in the midst of Reconstruction and redefinition. He also experience directly the Creole culture of his mother's side of the family. His time in New Orleans can be seen as the bridge between his affluent youth and the series of shocks he was soon to encounter after his return to Paris. His father died, his brother turned out to have amassed enormous business debts. leaving the family bankrupt.  Degas sold his house, an inherited art collection and for the first time, had to work as an artist to make a living. The following decade, beginning in 1874,  saw the creation of some of his greatest works. 

From the New Yorker: An air of Dickensian tragic irony attends Degas’s last years, when, like an avatar of Marley’s ghost, he dragged the chains of his spent obsessions. He seems to have learned in 1870 that his eyesight was defective. It worsened with age. The condition, which made him painfully sensitive to light, probably played a role in the turn toward tactility in his late works, exploiting memories of visual form that were lodged in his wrist and inner eye. He often worked surfaces with his fingers. The physicality of his charcoals and pastels, after the early eighteen-nineties, positively explodes in strong blacks and blazing colors. He increasingly relies on a motif of the female back, arranged diagonally at an angle from the side, like a raked and tilted shelf. Meanwhile, his sculptures of dancers and horses ride a jet stream of perfect realization, as if less produced than discovered. Degas rarely appeared in public, except at auctions of his art. He stopped working in 1912. In wintry isolation, he survived until 1917, dying at the age of eighty-three.

 

He never reconciled himself to being thought of as a leader of the impressionist movement although he was one of the most active and powerful members. Degas became renowned for his depictions of modern Parisian women  such as dancers, cafe singers and laundresses. Degas’s style differed from the Impressionists in that he preferred to paint indoors from sketches or memory rather than in the open air, and his work displayed a quality of line, foregoing the characteristic Impressionist detached brush strokes. Known for his keen observation of naturalistic movement, Degas’s realistic style set him apart from his Impressionist contemporaries.

He seems to have believed that an artist can have no private life and his cruel wit alienated most of his friends. His reputation as a curmudgeon was well deserved as was his open Antisemitism. 

From Wikipedia: The Dreyfus Affair, which divided Paris from the 1890s to the early 1900s, further intensified his anti-Semitism. By the mid-1890s, he had broken off relations with all of his Jewish friends, publicly disavowed his previous friendships with Jewish artists, and refused to use models who he believed might be Jewish. He also fired a model who was Protestant. He remained an outspoken anti-Semite and member of the anti-Semitic "Anti-Dreyfusards" until his death.

https://www.theartstory.org/artist-degas-edgar.htm

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dgsp/hd_dgsp.htm

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/degas-and-his-dancers-79455990/

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2002/10/degas200210

 

Happy Independence Day

 

Happy Independence Day

From the Blog, As Time Goes By:

There are many inspiring quotations from great thinkers about what the maintenance of freedom entails. I've chose three that speak to what we are up against during this assault on our nation's very existence:

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” - George Bernard Shaw

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” - Thomas Paine

“It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority.” - Samuel Adams

That's our job now. Every one of us who believes in the Declaration of Independence (which, by all reports coming from the federal government, does not include a certain political party and it's candidate for president), must do what we are capable of to help preserve its ideals.

The full text at:

http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2018/07/independence-day-2018.html