World Art I – History of Painting (AHD-1010-3DS) Fall 2019, Thursdays, 3:00 – 5:50 p.m. 209 E 23 St, Room 303 Instructor: Jeff Edwards ([email protected]) November 21, 2019 !!!
Final exam, Fall 2019 ! Instructions: (read this part carefully, because there are a few differences between this exam and the mid-term) ! There are three essay questions below; pick ONE (and only one) of them to answer. This exam is due in class at 3:20 pm on Tuesday, December 17th, the last day of class. ! For the question you select, write an answer in the form of a short essay. The answer should be typed in 12-point Times New Roman font (or another font that is equivalent in size), double- spaced, and have one-inch margins on all sides. Your answer should be in the form of a continuous essay, and not just a list of bullet points. ! Since you only have to answer one question, your response should be as thorough and complete as you can make it (it’s probably a good idea to plan on writing an essay of at least two full pages or a little more; there is no upper limit.) The questions below are more demanding than the ones in the last exam, because they all require you to decide what to write about and then think creatively about your response. In some cases, you will have to choose an artwork based on a criterion I’ve provided and then interpret it. Whichever question you decide to answer, be sure to do a thorough job with it and answer it as completely as you can. In general, the questions below are much more open-ended than the ones on the mid-term, and some of them require you to look at several different parts of the book to find all the information you need, so think very carefully about which one you want to answer. ! All of the information you need to answer these questions is in the textbook. If you state any opinions of your own, be sure to back them up with facts from the book. (If you do decide use any other sources, you must cite those sources with both notes and a proper bibliography, and you can only use sources that follow the same standards that I gave you for your research paper, so no art blogs, no Wikipedia, etc.) ! When you write your answers, restate any information you got from the book in your own words and indicate which page it came from. If you quote directly from the book, be sure to put the quoted text in quotation marks and give me the number of the page where you found it. (I will lower your grade if you forget to do this.) Don’t use to many direct quotes. I want your answer to be mostly in your own words. !!
! Question #1: A few times this semester, we have seen (and will see) paintings made by women, including Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster, Clara Peeters, Rachel Ruysch, Lavinia Fontana, and a handful of others. ! Choose a painting from the textbook that was made by a woman artist and discuss it, describing its imagery, what it means, how it relates to other paintings made around the same time time by other artists, and what is unusual or distinctive about it. Here are some things you can think about (these are just suggestions, because not all of these questions will be relevant to every painting, and the book may not provide this information for some of them): !
a) How does the subject matter or imagery of the painting relate to the time and place in which it was made? Is there a message or moral in the painting?
b) How was the artist you chose accepted by her peers and the public? What was her career like? What kind of patrons did she work for?
c) How did she get her artistic training?
d) Some of the paintings by women that are shown in the textbook are self-portraits, and others show stories about women from the Bible or from ancient history. If you picked one of these, do you think the artist’s choice of subject somehow reflected her own status as a women painter in a field largely dominated by men? If so, how?
e) Is there anything else about the artist or painting that is interesting or worth mentioning? (For example, is she or her painting historically important in some specific way?) !!
! Question #2: Throughout the course of the semester, we have seen different types of patrons for art emerge at different points in European history. While the church was the major source of commissions in the late Gothic and early Renaissance periods, patronage for painting gradually expanded to include aristocrats, merchants, and eventually even middle-class families in some parts of Europe. During the Baroque period in the Dutch Republic, an open market for paintings also emerged, and for the first time artists made works “on spec,” or without a previous commission, in the hope that buyers would come along for them. ! Select a single work of art that was clearly shaped or influenced by the rise of a new class of patron that had not existed before. (It can be from any period that we’ve covered or will cover.) Describe how the taste and interests of this new type of patron affected the way the work looked, using facts from the textbook about the painting to make your case. What is new in this work of art that hadn’t been done or seen before, and how was this new element shaped by the demands of the new customer base? Changes in patronage can affect painting techniques and materials, subject matter, the way people and their lives are depicted, the kinds of morals or messages that are conveyed, and so on. Those are the kind of things that you should comment on and explain.
! Question #3: [NOTE: This is a new topic that I haven’t introduced in class yet; I may introduce it briefly today, but we will cover it more thoroughly next week.] ! This question is about the rise of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in France during the 17th century (as discussed throughout chapter 21 and in part of chapter 22). ! Describe how the Academy shaped artmaking in France, covering all of the following things: !
a) How did King Louis XIV think about art (what did he think it should look like, and what purpose should it serve), and how did he use it as a political tool? What was the “royal style,” and what was its role in the evolution of French art?
b) What kinds of strict new rules and standards for painting were created by Charles Le Brun and the Academy’s other founders? Exactly how were previous artists and different kinds of subject matter (for example, still lifes or historical paintings) ranked by the Academy, and how did this affect the kind of art that members of the Academy would make?
c) What influence did the painting of Nicholas Poussin have on the creation of the academic style? (Specifically, what aspects of his style, subject matter, and painting techniques appealed to the Academy’s founders?)
d) Was academic painting conservative or progressive in its views on art and artistic innovation? Explain your answer, providing specific facts and/or examples from the textbook to back up your argument.
e) Who were the Poussinistes and the Rubénistes? What was their disagreement within the Academy about? Who was the most important of the Rubénistes, and how did the Academy have to change its rules to allow him to join its membership?
f) Pick one academic painting from the book and describe how its imagery reflects the rules and tastes of the Academy.
