The Breakdown of Perspectival Space
(and the rise of Self-Reflexivity in Modern Art)
Surface Depth Surface
Medieval Renaissance Modernism500 -1300 1300 -1600 1850 -1960
Early Renaissance
Early Renaissance
The Annunciation,
Fra Carnevale (1448)
Early Renaissance
Flagellation of Christ, Piero Della Francesca (1450)
The Ideal City
EarlyRenaissance
Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, Jan Van Eyck (1435)
People slowlybecome more“Naturally” depictedin that space.
More “Naturally” depicted.
Early Renaissance
The Arnolfini Portrait,
Jan Van Eyck (1434)
Early Renaissance
The Arnolfini Portrait,
Jan Van Eyck (1434)
Renaissance
Renaissance
Bodies eventually get fleshed out.
Renaissance
Vanitas/ Still-Life, Pieter Claeszoon (1630)
High level of articulated detail.
Renaissance
Vanitas/ Still-Life, Pieter Claeszoon (1630)
High level of articulated detail.
Renaissance
Vanitas/ Still-Life, Pieter Claeszoon (1630)
High level of articulated detail.
Surface Depth Surface
Medieval Renaissance Modernism500 -1300 1300 -1600 1850 -1960
Renaissance Modernism1300 -1600 1850 -1960
Rococo
Renaissance Modernism1300 -1600 1850 -1960
Symbolism
Renaissance Modernism1300 -1600 1850 -1960
Romanticism
Early Modernism
Early Modernism
Oath of the Horatii, Jacques-Louis David (1784)
•Two Planes•Theatrically Staged
Early Modernism
Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David (1784)
•ForegroundNo background
Early Modernism
Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault, (1818–1819)
•Pile of PeopleBlobby forms
Early Modernism
Orphan Girl at the Cemetery, Delacroix (1824)
Early Modernism
•HyperrealismLarge EyesColor
Early Modernism
Massacre at Chios,Massacre at Chios,Eugène DelacroixEugène Delacroix
(1824)(1824)
Early Modernism
Oath of the Horatii, Delacroix (1824)
•Too Real, Harsh“Attack on Art”
Massacre at Chios,Massacre at Chios, Eugène Delacroix (1824) Eugène Delacroix (1824)
Early Modernism
Early Modernism
The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken J. M. W. Turner (1838)
•Surface EmphasisPre-Impressionism
Early Modernism
The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken J. M. W. Turner (1838)
•Surface EmphasisPre-Impressionism
Modernism
Modernism
The Luncheon on the Grass, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
The Luncheon on the Grass, Édouard Manet (1863)
• Nude & dressed men (in contemporary setting)Nude & dressed men (in contemporary setting)• Combination of GenresCombination of Genres
– still life, landscape, nude, portraiturestill life, landscape, nude, portraiture
• Background figure too largeBackground figure too large• Nude is washed outNude is washed out
Modernism
Modernism
The Luncheon on the Grass, Édouard Manet (1863)
In 1863 Painting with a capital “P” was born.
It was now a Medium.
Modernism
Modernism
• Never prior to Manet had the breach between the taste of the public and changing types of beauty—which art continually renews—been so conclusively final. With Manet began the days of wrath, of those outbursts of scorn and derision with which, ever since, the public has greeted each successive rejuvenation of beauty.
—George Bataille
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
Modernism
• Reference Venus de Urbino
• Contemporary prostitute slippers
• Washed out skin• Look “matter of
factly” at viewer• Cold, strong,
young, prostitute
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• The laughter that lay in wait for Olympia was something unprecedented; here was the first masterpiece before which the crowd fairly lost all control of itself.
—George Bataille
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Jean Ravenel, art critic, “What on earth is this yellow-bellied odalisque, this wretched model picked up God knows where and pawned off as representing Olympia?”
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Paul de Saint-Victor, art critic, “The crowd gathers round Monsieur Manet's highly spiced Olympia as it would round a body at the morgue.”
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Painters, and especially Édouard Manet, who is an analytic painter, do not share the masses' obsession with the subject: to them, the subject is only a pretext to paint, whereas for the masses only the subject exists.
— Emile Zola, 1867
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Her real nudity (not merely that of her body) is the silence that emanates from her, like that from a sunken ship. All we have is the “sacred horror” of her presence .
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Her real nudity (not merely that of her body) is the silence that emanates from her, like that from a sunken ship. All we have is the “sacred horror” of her presence—presence whose sheer simplicity is tantamount to absence. Her harsh realism—which, for the Salon public, was no more than a gorilla-like ugliness—is inseparable from the concern Manet had to reduce what he saw to the mute and utter simplicity of what was there.
Olympia, Édouard Manet (1863)
Modernism
• Viewer is propositioning barmaid
• Bored, resigned expression
• Snap-shot-like composition (feet in corner)
• Impossible mirror image
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Édouard Manet (1881-2)
Modernism
• Manet, from the very start, had put the image of man on the same footing as that of roses or buns.
• —George Bataille
Arcadia(a videogame that combines genres)
• Created by Gamelab at MIT• http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/arcadia.jsp