Neoclassicism Paintings

The neoclassic time period was from 1750-1830. This term literally means 'new classic' so we can assume that we are talking about some kind of rebirth. In fact this rebirth is of ancient Greek, Roman, and Renaissance art-especially paintings. This movement spread across Western Europe, but was only really used in France and England to express nationalism, courage, and sacrifice. This is due to the fact that during the late 1700's England was fighting the U.S. rebels who were trying to make the 13 colonies into a free nation. Also later on England fought the Americans in the war of 1812 and lost. So we can imagine that their paintings would show the bravery of their soldiers fighting the evil American savages. It's funny because later on, about 100 years later, England and the United States are best friends. Can we expect another British invasion anytime soon? But back to the topic. Neoclassic painting emphasized  rationality and traditional styles. Most figures were that of ancient Greek subjects from myths and liturature like the Illiad and the Odyssey. these artistists of the time took great care to try and depict scenes as accurate as possible based on those myths and peices of liturature. Here is a sample of a Neoclassic painting:

Napoleon Crossing the Alps

By: Jacques-Louis David

Although I only mentioned the English wars, Napoleon was on the move as well in France. He was conquring territory quickly and eventually controlled much of Europe before his exile. This painting depicts Napoleon as a man of men. He is telling his troops to continue onward through the Alps, a mountain range in switzerland, to get to Genoa in Italy to reinforce it for an Austrian attack. He didn't make it in time but eventually beat the Austrians out of Italy and regained control. This painting shows the paitriotism of the french, showing their armies diligently moving to protect France and it's territories from invading nations. It makes Napoleon look like an awsome guy, one worth fighting for as he is in front of the army and bravly moving through the snow covered mountains, risking his own life and limbs for the saftey of France. This painting, if you noticed, also doesn't emphasize color and shadow. The colors on the horse, where they are darkened, shouldn't be that color. Also the shadow is virtually non-existant. This is the effect of neoclassical paintings. Much of the emphasis is on the actual shapes and the realistic conditions and atire of the scene. So from this we see the revertion of Extreme realistic paintings to a more object/scene focused subject. And this the the Neoclassic time period.  

Baroque Paintings

BAroque is an interesting time and style of of painting. It came about around 1600-1750 and it, once again changed art of all kinds. While the rennaissnace adopted a calm almost calculated and realistic veiws of the world, baroque paintings tried to evoke emotion. It tried to cause sadness, happiness, anger, and other emotions by using color, intense uses of light and shadow and a mesh of various other styles to appeal to the senses. Also, as opposed to rennaisance art, the baroque period made its art so that action was shown. For example: in the Rennaissance painters would often depict a scene right before a battle, fight or wedding. In the Baroque era, painters showed the battle or the wedding as it occured. It showed the emotion of wars, weddings, and other events as they occured so that the viewer could feel it too. Here is an example of a baroque painting:

The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba

By: Claude Lorrain

We see that this painting has wide aray of colors in use, even though they are quite dull. However, the uses of lighting and shadow are perfect to create a scene that incites awe and anticipation. You can see people getting ready to leave their home to go travel to a distant land. And this painting makes the veiwer feel the same. When I look at this I feel small and in anticipation of a great journey. there is a feeling of great expectaion that come from the setting or rising (probably rising) sun as the ships finalize their preperations and are about to leave. So with this we that that at the time the Catholic Church was hopeful and anticiapted a new begining of its future. The pinting its self was part of a set for the Catholic Church and this one probably reflected the veiw of many Catholics as they wondered what was to become of their faith since the Protestant reformation.  

Renaissance Paintings

The Rennaissance was a time period of tremendous change. Huge things started to happen and people's lives and ways of thinking would never be the same ever again. The rennaissance was a period in which logical and thought out ideas and science gained power. No more did people think that certain phenomena occured because God willed it or anything other reason that doen't really explain things. People learned to think about themselves since indivisualism surfaced and spread. The Roman Catholic Church also began to lose much of its power. All this can be seen in the paintings that were drawn during the rennaissance. Lets take a look at this painting from the high rennaissance era, 1475–1525 (the rennaissance was broken up into 3 parts):

  

The Betrothal of the Virgin

By: Raphael (1504)

What do you notice about this painting that is completely different than Medieval art? If you said depth,  more realistic, vanishing point, and other realistic things, then you are right! During the rennaissance many techniques were developed to change the medieval ideas of religion and almost surrealistic figures. Rennaissance art captured the scene in all its glory. Due to the fact that science and logic began to resurface, paintings reflected that revival. Paintings were realistic. Shadows were correctly placed and the veiw was such that things got smaller the further away they were. Also, no single subject was painted to be the extreme center of the universe. There was always something happening in the background that had some relevance. In this painting the virgin, Mary, is being married to Joseph. It shows the group up close but there are people just walking by in the background. In Medieval paintings there would never be anyone just walking by Mary and Joseph. This completley symbolized the change in people's attitudes towards religon. People became more worldly, mundane, that they would just walk past Mary and Joseph getting married! No longer was Mary a revered being that was held by angels, she was now a person who was getting married and only a few people were invited-or cared! so this painting by Raphael is a perfect example of how the rennaissance changed people's ideas and attitudes towards their lives. Also this is the begining of a revolution. A revolution that made it possible to depict, through art, the lives and emotions of people. Even though people did do a kind of art like that before, it was eradicated by waves of religion that caused painters to abandon the world for the heavens and hells in their paintings. 
  Some people who read my posts may ask, "why are you posting about the history of paintings?" I say that I want to and these people, who painted these peices, want to have people know the society of their times. I was inspired by two things; obligation and intrigue. I have always looked at art work as oil or paint on canvas, but now I realize that people were painting the ideals and feelings of their societies, not just pretty shapes. And I hope that I'm helping to spread at least my interpretation of their ideas that are portrayed in these paintings.  

Dark (Medieval) Age Paintings

Medieval age paintings are interesting because they focus much more on symbolism than realism. This means that in the painting certain symbols represent certain things and that took precedance over realism, which dictates that the painting look as real as it possibly can. However not only were paintings unrealistic, they were religous. These probably reflected the times as the Catholic Church was quite powerful at the time and ruled with an iron grip. Therefore, all painters could draw were probably religous symbols and images. Some of these unrealistic ideas and techniques resurface later in the 20th century with the rise of the metaphysical but that's for a later topic.

Here is a picture of a medieval painting: What do you notice about it that is different from paintings you've seen?

Looking at this painting you see some obvious things, one of which is that the woman in the center is huge! She takes up the view of the painting herself. that is becasue the artist Giotto, and others who have painted in this time period, wanted the primary subject to be the center of attention. In this case the subject is Madonna, or Mary, and baby Jesus. Now this is probably the most important part of this painting: Jesus is not interacting with his mother. As a human child Jesus should probably be cudling up to his mother but no, he is addressing the people. This small detail shows that medieval art is all about the religon of christianity. Also it says that Jesus is not a normal baby but a greater being since the way he kind of treats his mother with the stance he takes in her lap shows that he's the boss. This was the essence of medieval painting in a nutshell.

Intro to my blog

As the title says, this blog is about the paintings done by people, obviously as other animals cannot paint, and how they relate to humanities. First of all, humanities is the study of what makes us people and so the arts, specificly in this blog, paintings, are one of the things that make us human. Also I will be starting from the Medieval period and working my way up. I hope to be as accurate as possible on the dating and names as I can. So, I hope you enjoy my blog.