...l.com The Art of Social Protest: “The Raft of the Medusa” and “Guernica” Some people are advocates of the opinion that art designed to influence social behavior is reprehensible, dirty, nothing more than propaganda, and so on. However, it is impossible to present a complete picture of art if we ignore its function of a social protest; the history of art provides us with many examples. Painting can be an extremely powerful form of protest against inequity, atrocity or inequality. Traditionally, painting is usually supportive of the political needs of old-established order because it is backed up and bought by wealthy people, and thus painting is less willing to engage in social controversies. However, certain artists stand out as exceptions. Among them are two great figures in the history of world painting Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), one of the French pioneers of the Romantic movement, exposing a great contemporary scandal in “The Raft of the Medusa”, and an Andalusian-Spanish painter Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), expressing his fury at the bombing of a peaceful town during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in his painting “Guernica”. Although these two painters differ by origin, style, artistic expression, their works mentioned above have very much in common. Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa” and Picasso’s “Guernica” are perhaps the most significant paintings of social protest in our time. Both paintings are based on real tragic events. However, their creators apparently...
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...killer. I was only eight or nine at the time but I can still see her yelling today. This is why the wall is so very important to Vietnam Veterans. This wall shows that over fifty eight thousand men and women died for their service during this war. This wall is more than just a large piece of art for many people it is a memorial of their loved ones and friends. The Raft of the Medusa is a painting based on an event during the artist Theodore Gericault’s lifetime. The event was a ship call the Medusa stuck a sand bar and had to be abandon. The captain only let wealthy and well-connected people use the lifeboats. This forced the rest of the crew to make a raft out of parts of the ship. The rate at one time held 149 people but only fifteen survived to rescue. Shortly after their rescue five more die. The painting shows a makeshift raft with suffering man trying to stay alive. It is amazing the detail that parts of the painting has and the realism in the seen. By looking at the painting, you can almost feel the pain and fear that the crewmembers had to endure. . References Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa. (2007). Retrieved from...
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...TUI University Module 2 – SLP ART101 – Art History Jean-Louis Andre Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) was a very prominent French artist, painter, and lithographer. He was considered a pioneer of the Romantic movement even though he lived such a short time. He was born in Rouen, France. He studied for a time under Pierre-Narcisse Guerin but soon left to study at the Louvre. He was influenced by his life – his military career, his time at the Louvre, his time at Versailles and the horse stables, a trip to Italy, etc. (1) He was known as a chaotic and tempestuous person but an almost obsessive artist. Gericault would do intensive research on his art – studying, interviewing people, recreating events, etc. He would check out body parts from the local morgue and keep them in his apartment to study them at various decaying stages and sketch them. (2) He also painted a series of portraits of the insane from patients of Dr. Etienne-Jean Georget, a pioneer in psychiatric medicine. (1) Romanticism focused on the soul. It went beyond logic and went to emotion. It focused on the fantastic and wild. It was about the artist feeling and expressing in a way that the observers could also relate. Brush strokes were quick as opposed to the methodical preciseness of Neo-classical works. The Romantic period was influenced by the Age of Enlightenment and the Revolutions. “Orthodoxies were gone, old certainties were undermined, philosophy questioned the logical order of the universe;...
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...more present in the art. The new paradigm occurs in The Raft of the Medusa (Le Radeau de la Méduse) by Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault, an oil painting created in 1818 and 1819. Although the formal differences between Romantic and Modern artworks, Yellow Harbor (Gelben Hafen) by Paul Klee, a watercolor and transferred printing ink on paper mounted on cardboard produced in 192, also evokes strong social and political criticism. As one of the pioneer artists of the Romanticism, Théodore Géricault witnessed growing social injustice and mental disorder in the...
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...Neo-Classicism and Romanticism Though the Neo-Classical and Romantic art periods sit side by side on the Art History timeline, their values and inspirations couldn’t be farther apart. Whereas Neo-Classical art valued the precise forms and order of Classical Roman and Greek art, Romantic artists were inspired more by the unrestrained, dramatic works of the Medieval and Baroque eras. Both art periods (Neo-Classical and Romantic) came about in response to (and a desire to differ from) an earlier period. The Neo-Classicists were rebelling against the vulgarity and excesses of the Rococo period and the Romanticists were displaying their rejection of the order, harmony and rational thought of the Neo-Classicists. The Neo-Classical art period (like many art periods) evolved from a previous art period -in rebellion from it. This art period, however, is different from most in that it wasn’t invented by the active artists of the time. It was, perhaps, the first art movement started by writers and theoreticians (Lucie, 1992). German scholar and leading propagandist for the Neo-Classical movement, Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) deplored the Rococo style, which was all the rage in Dresden, where he worked. In his pamphlet, Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture, he said that the modern artists could only become great again by imitating Greek art (Stokstad, 2005). Cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692-1779), who possessed a large collection of ancient...
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...Daimyo… Bushido The Closing of Japan Nobunaga vs. Hideyoshi Matthew Perry Chapter 11: London on September 2, 1666-the great fire destroyed it. Francis Bacon-leading advocate of the empirical method Inductive reasoning Empirical method Rene Descartes Deductive reasoning Deism Johannes Kepler-had made detailed records of the movements of the planets, substantiating Copernicus’s theory that the cosmos was heliocentric (sun-centered), not geocentric (earth-centered) Galileo Galilei-improved the design and magnification of the telescope Geocentric Heliocentric The law of falling bodies (gravity) Pope Urban VIII Giordano Bruno Isaac Newton-computed the law of universal gravitation in a precise mathematical equation, demonstrating that each and every object exerts an attraction to a greater or lesser degree on all other objects The Industrial Revolution Lunar Society-a group of prominent manufactures,inventors,and naturalists met in and around Birmingham each month on the night of the full moon to discuss,chemistry,,medicine,gases,electricity,and every subject that may contribute to the fruitful society. Thomas Hobbes-argued in Leviathan that the people needed to submit to the authority of a ruler to prevent anarchy. The social contract gives up individual sovereignty in exchange for protection from depravity. Absolutism Social contract John Locke-argued that a ruler has limited authority; if the ruler fails to protect the people’s rights, then the people...
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