The female portrait mask
Thesis - 4 pages - Arts and art history
Completed in the second century Common Era, The Female Portrait Mask was constructed under the longstanding tradition of funerary wax portrait masks used to commemorate the upper classes and their distinguished ancestry. The seventeen inch tall and eleven inch wide mask presents the portrait of...
Neoclassicism, Benjamin West, and Cupid
Thesis - 3 pages - Arts and art history
The Neoclassical art movement began in Europe in the late 1700s and lasted into the early 1800s. The movement was inspired in part by the public interest in ancient artifacts found in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum - a sensational discovery at the time, which galvanized the art world of...
The relationship between skill and art
Thesis - 3 pages - Arts and art history
The author Dave Beech writes in his article “Skill in Art” that skill is being devalued by society through several means. Once explaining the extent to which skill has ideological value, the author explains several reasons for this to take place. In as far as art is ideological, Beech...
The treatment of women in English folk ballads
Thesis - 4 pages - Arts and art history
One of the distinguishing characteristics of folk ballads is the impersonal attitude shown by their makers towards the story's events: “The story is told for the story's own sake, while the prepossessions and judgments of the author or authors are kept for the most part in the...
Nikki S. Lee's artistic agency in senior's project
Case study - 5 pages - Arts and art history
Of all the photographs displayed in the Tang's viewing room, Nikki S. Lee's Senior's Project (13) was definitely one that I initially overlooked while surveying the set of original photographs the Tang owns. At first glance, the photograph did not seem very compelling, particularly in terms of...
Noel Gallagher: God or Oasis
Thesis - 3 pages - Arts and art history
British rocker Noel Gallagher is one of the greatest singer songwriter from England in the last twenty years. Gallagher has been the lead guitarist and primary songwriter for the band Oasis since it was founded in 1992. During the seventeen years of the band's presence in the music scene, Oasis...
Comparison between Edgar Degas and Edward Hopper's approach to nudes
Thesis - 4 pages - Arts and art history
American art of the 20th century is richer than one can think. The Ash can school, cubism, precisionism , biomorphism etc... One of the big movements was regionalism, of which Edward Hopper was a leader. But people often forget that Hopper not only painted landscapes, street scenes and light but...
What do you hear or perceive as the expressive narrative of the third movement of Beethoven's Sonata in C-sharp minor, Op. 27 #2 and how does the music create that narrative?
Thesis - 4 pages - Arts and art history
Composed in 1800-1801, called Moonlight by the poet Ludwig Rellstab, the sonata Op. 27 #2 became one of the most famous of Beethoven's pieces almost immediately after its publication. It continues to fascinate the audience by the lyrical and dramatic first movement contrasting with the virtuoso...
Futurism's musical eccentric: The instruments of Luigi Russolo and sound as art
Thesis - 7 pages - Arts and art history
This paper will discuss the sound art works of Luigi Russolo, who was a member of the Italian Futurist art movement. The Futurists were a group of artists, some of whom like Marinetti, a founding member of the group, is associated with the Fascist movement in Italy. (Antliff, 2000) Though it...
A discussion of two controversial works of art : Edouard Manet's Déjeuner sure l'herbe and Olympia
Thesis - 5 pages - Arts and art history
A name associated with controversy in the art world, French-born artist, Edouard Manet, has come to be viewed as one of the founders of modern art. (Cole & Gealt, 1989). Born on January 23, 1832, his mother the goddaughter of Charles Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden and father, distinguished...
Picasso's Demoiselles d`Avignon - The beginnings of Cubism and Picasso's radical vision
Thesis - 6 pages - Arts and art history
This paper will present an examination of Picasso`s painting `Les Demoiselles d`Avignon` (1907). It is considered by many critics to be the first real Cubist, or part-Cubist work in Picasso`s huge body of art works. The paper will examine different critical views and provide a descriptive, close...
Impressionism in Western art: An evaluation and discussion of the lives, times and works of Manet, Monet and Renoir
Thesis - 10 pages - Arts and art history
This essay provides comprehensive information on works by three artists known for their influence in the period known as Impressionism. Highlights of the following topics will be discussed: Overview of Impressionism; The Salon; Outdoor; Color; Patrons; Women; Japan; Crisis; Culture, Times and...
Critique of Jackson Pollock's convergence
Thesis - 5 pages - Arts and art history
Convergence, the painting chosen for this review was a work of legendary American painter, Jackson Pollock, (1912-1956) pioneer and central figure of the Abstract Expressionism movement. Convergence, oil on canvas, completed in 1952, is nearly 8 feet tall by 13 feet wide and hangs at the...
Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and the question of anti-semitism
Thesis - 5 pages - Arts and art history
The eighth of Wagner's operas and his only comedy, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) tells the story of a knight who wins a wife by challenging the musical establishment. It was the first of Wagner's operas to not be based in myth; rather, the composer went to great...
The Hunger Artists
Thesis - 4 pages - Arts and art history
As many authors have spent novels analyzing, we are not alone in constructing ourselves. In his essay "Postscripts on Societal Control," Deleuze aptly states "control is not a closed system." In this world of ever-growing commodities and technological advances, it is becoming increasingly...
The legends of music
Essay - 10 pages - Arts and art history
Music is a form of entertainment that has existed for millions of years. Music even predates written word. The harmonious or discordant sounds of music are a reflection of human emotions. Songs have the ability to make one feel sad, happy or angry. Our atmosphere is affected by music; if we...
Staging in plays
Essay - 3 pages - Arts and art history
The staging of plays varies greatly in complexity, beauty and visual effect from one play to another. Writers sometimes focus their ideas rather on the characters' speech and acting than on creating a unique and refined staging technique. Both Henrik Ibsen in A Doll's House and Arthur Miller in...
Matthew Barney or the Gesamtkunstwerk of the 21st century
Essay - 5 pages - Arts and art history
When talking or writing about the American artist Matthew Barney, critics and historians of art always start with the traditional biographic descriptions which in the case of Barney are quite pleasant and are justified by the fact that the artist himself uses autobiographic references in his own...
William Hogarth (1697-1764)
Essay - 5 pages - Arts and art history
The exhibition about William Hogarth at the Louvre museum is an essential one for many reasons. First of all, it is the first time that such a retrospect is held in France to honor the British painter. Besides, it is the occasion to discover or rediscover this genius artist admired by the...
Music and politics (2004)
Essay - 13 pages - Arts and art history
Art is often seen as a way to escape from reality, to enter a new universe, and indeed it is. Art has to create emotions, to make people understand how irrational their life can be or sometimes just to make the beauty hidden from their eyes appears. And nobody knows how Art manage to touch so...
Gustave Courbet & revolutionary Art after 1848
Essay - 5 pages - Arts and art history
The idea of a revolutionary art could easily be related to famous artists, such as Malevich and his attempt to transform art into a collection of universal forms, Rimbaud and his will to crush down the language in order to crush down the world, Schoenberg and his dodecaphonism or even the Dada...
The influence of Socrealism in Poland
Essay - 10 pages - Arts and art history
Socrealism is „an attempt to translate Marxism into the sphere of art” . This term appeared first in 1932 in the soviet press. It is, more formally, an artistic current; it was indeed the official art trend imposed by the Communist regimes. It originates in the Union of Socialist and...
The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood
Essay - 11 pages - Arts and art history
A considerable number of women were active in every phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Some, as was the case for Elizabeth Siddal and Lucy Madox Brown, incorporated the ideas of their husbands and fathers into their own art. Others were deeply influenced by the freshness of the Pre-Raphaelite...
Was the assumption of German musical supremacy merely a constituent part of an emergent German nationalism between 1870 and 1918?
Thesis - 5 pages - Arts and art history
What the German nation is and what its boundaries are have always puzzled historians of the early construction of the German nation-state. Indeed the further back into history one searches, the more elusive the very notion of a German national identity becomes. According to Herder, nationalism...
Orientalist painting
Thesis - 5 pages - Arts and art history
Today, we are going to talk about Orientalist painting. In this way, I'm going to present you the general aspects of that kind of painting: its historical context, its specificities, its recurrent themes, its criticisms and finally its decline. Throughout this presentation, I will try to show you...
History of Jazz: Jazz and Modern Painting
Essay - 5 pages - Arts and art history
Ideas in the worlds of music and art have probably cross-pollinated from the beginning. The lush and passionate colors, rhythms, and themes of the Romantic painters like Eugene Delacroix mirror the lush and passionate melodies, movements, and moods of the Romantic composers like Beethoven. The...
More than what meets the eye: Frida Kahlo and surrealism
Essay - 5 pages - Arts and art history
Frida Kahlo never thought of herself as a surrealist as many people did. In fact, given the context of the historical background of her works, she was regarded as more of a feminist cult figure than anything else. Not even Kahlo herself recognized the surrealist dimensions of her paintings until...
Eric Clapton: Legend among legends
Essay - 4 pages - Arts and art history
In the late 1960s, one of the most well known cases of graffiti observed around the musical Meccas of London and New York was "Clapton is God". Three decades later, the sensational guitarist and singer continues to keep his fans captivated by producing remarkable musical innovations. His...
Landscape painting in 19th and 20th centuries
Essay - 10 pages - Arts and art history
Landscape painting in the American context emerged in the 19th century along with the philosophical works of Emerson and Thoreau. The literary arts also began to turn toward an examination of the natural world at about this time. American painters, whom had previously been preoccupied with...
Magnificent "Madrigals" (and bombastic ballets) of the exciting "English" variety
Essay - 5 pages - Arts and art history
Speaking strictly in musical terms, the English madrigal is the result of assimilation. The genre generally referred to as the English madrigal was borne of the Italian madrigal form. However, just as historians no longer refer to America as the cultural melting pot, rather a tossed salad. The...
