final paper

10% of your grade
Final Paper
2-3 pages

•

• introduction
• thorough description of formal elements
• interpretation of what those visual cues suggest through analysis of the formal elements

Analyze how the formal elements affect the viewers understanding of the work

How does the artist use formal elements to give you initial emotional response?

 

Thesis: How does the painting mean 

Imagine describing in a succinct wayn- dimensions, subject, arrangement - to enable someone who can’t see it to see in the minds eye in 1st paragraph

Detail formal elements, figure out how they mean, conclude

books

Interesting Art History Books:

The Gothic Enterprise

Robert Scott

link

Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

Ross King

link

paint a picture with words; punctuation

Assignment: “Paint a picture with words”

•         Choose a painting from the 19th century

•         Your job is to paint the picture with your words

•         Do not go beyond and provide context or any further information

•         Rely solely on your ability to describe what you see; use the formal elements list to help you

•         Be specific about colors, tones, variations, light, composition, placement, perspective, space, etc.

•         Do not include an image (other than in your Works Cited) so that the reader’s only information about what the painting looks like is from your words

Simple sentence:

simple subject, simple predicate, compound subject, compound predicate = no commas

Ex: The bodies appear to float in the frame but are rendered with a strong sense of weight and mass.

Compound sentence:

Two or more independent clauses connected by a coordinator or conjunctive adverb [think if you can say each part as its own sentence or not]

Coordinators (for, and, but, or, so, yet) are preceded by a comma

Ex: The bodies appear to float, but they are rendered with a strong sense of weight and mass.

Conjunctive adverbs (however, nevertheless, also, hence, thus, therefore…) are preceded by a semicolon and followed by a comma

Ex: The bodies appear to float; however, they are rendered with a strong sense of weight and mass.

Lists:

Lists have commas between each item, unless there are only two items

Ex: Kalina and Ioan are my students.

Ex: Ralitsa, Christina, Ana Maria, Antoaneta, and Aleksandra are also in Art History.

Modifying/specifying

If you specify a person/place/thing in the middle of the sentence, put commas on either side

Ex: The two teachers, Katherine and Rob, worked across the hall from each other.

Not: The two teachers, Katherine and Rob worked across the hall from each other.

clarification

Just to make sure everything is clear, some more information on grading, the syllabus, and formal analysis.

Grading:
Assignments: 50%
Final Paper: 10%
Participation: 40%

Our remaining syllabus:
Date, Lecture, Assignment for the next class

November 12	19th  century painting	"paint a picture with your words" - this is focused primarily on your description of what you see, accurately describing what is there, how it is positioned, what it looks like and then the overall effect of all of those components
November 19	Early 20th century painting	Write one page paper describing  a painting - this is focused primarily on your description of what you see, accurately describing what is there, how it is positioned, what it looks like and then the overall effect of all of those components
December 3	Propaganda (primarily World War II)	Write one page paper analyzing an image of propaganda (poster, etc) - what it looks like, what is presented and how, what is the message and how is it supported by what you see
December 10	20th century American painting	Write one page paper analyzing a modern painting; Select work for longer paper
December 17	“How the Work Means”	Write two page paper - introduction, thorough description, interpretation of what those visual cues suggest through formal analysis of elements
January 14	Popular imagery – magazines, movies, musicians, etc	Write reflection on course, experience, new knowledge, perspective on art

Notes and clarification on writing:

In the introduction provide us with the artist, title of the work, date, location, media used, etc.

I find it helpful to fill out this list of formal elements and then rearrange them into sentence form as the next body paragraph after the introduction. Covering all (or almost all) of these topics will give your reader a clear sense of what constitutes the work you are looking it and how to imagine it.

Formal elements:

• color - what are the colors used? try to be as specific as possible, use adjectives and comparisons to items that are universally recognizable (ex: grapefruit pink, avocado green, dingy grey of old snow, pink of a fingertip pressed against a flashlight, child's primary colors, etc)
• composition - what is shown? are there people, buildings, animals, shapes? what do you recognize and how would you name it? are the people/buildings/animals general types or specific and known people (not by the title but by their recognizability either through fame or symbols)? how are things arranged - what is where in the work (above, below, front, back, left, right, etc)?
• texture - what is the surface of the work like - smooth, rough, perfect, imperfect, lumpy, is it consistent throughout or does it change depending on where it is, what is depicted, or when it was done?
• quality of brush strokes/application - for paintings, is the paint applied in a way that we can tell it was painted or does it blend so well that it isn't obvious? is there evidence of "the artist's hand" - that is, can we tell that someone painted it? is it flat or lumpy (impasto)? and so on...
• lighting - where does light come from? is there a light source in the painting? does the light in the painting clearly come from the light source in the painting? if the painting is made to be displayed only in one place (for example, a fresco in a church will forever be in that location), has the artist incorporated the light in that setting into the painting (sometimes artists "use" a real window to cast light upon their painting as though it comes from that part of the architecture)
• size - what are the dimensions
• subject matter - who is in the painting? what is happening?
• values/tonal variation - related to color, how bright are the colors? how much variation between colors are there - is there just one hue of blue or are there many different blues? is everything bright or faded? is it faded because that was the intention of the artists or the effect of time/light exposure/other damage?
• support/surface - what is it done on, in painting: on wood, plaster (fresco), canvas, etc
• space/perspective - what is space like in the painting - is it flat, are there layers of depth, is there perspective? is perspective accurate? how are space and perspective created (lines, size, something in front of something else, etc)?
• viewing angle - how do we see/approach the work? in painting, do we look at the figures front on or are they presented looking down/up at us?

Description will be about the use of these formal elements

Analyze how these formal elements affect the viewers understanding of the work

How does the artist use formal elements to give you initial emotional response

Thesis: How does the painting mean 

Imagine describing in a succinct way: dimensions, subject, arrangement to enable someone who can’t see it to see in the minds eye in 1st paragraph

Detail formal elements, figure out how they mean, conclude

The heart of your paper grade is how well you describe these formal elements and then once you have described them, what interpretations you can make. But I am largely interested in seeing how well you can describe what you see so that I can imagine a fairly accurate image of the work of art that you have chosen. Can I follow clearly your description, is it organized in a way that easily helps the viewer "draw" a mental image?

I hope this helps you in writing about your papers and thinking/talking about art in general. Let me know if you have further questions.

bernini, canova, rodin

The texts about Bernini, Canova, and Rodin from our powerpoint on 17th - 20th century sculpture:

Bernini, Apollo and Daphne

The Apollo and Daphne was executed almost simultaneously with the David. Upon entering the room from either of its two doors, the spectator’s first encounter with the sculpture would have been a most unexpected, indeed, a very surprising rear view of Apollo’s body.

By means of the dynamic thrust of Apollo’s body, Bernini guides us towards ever-rich sculptural details and an increasingly interesting narrative. The rising arc of Daphne’s long legs and torso directs our attention to her face and hands: we see her cry out and find that her fingers have changed to leaves. It is from this point of view that Apollo gains our sympathy, for we see his hand feel “the trembling spirit” beneath the bark and notice too that most poignant sense of loss has registered on his face.

The fable of Apollo and Daphne is disclosed then not in one dramatic vision but gradually and sequentially as one moves around the statue.

Canova, Tomb of Maria Christina

As with his earlier tombs, Canova took great pains to detach the monument to Maria Christina from the surrounding church in order to give it an independent space and independent meaning.

The dissociation of tomb and church is emphasized by all sorts of details. For one thing, Canova is careful to show us the pyramid as an actual building by differentiating the individual blocks of which it is composed… still more important, the gaping entrance to the pyramid is totally at odds with the wall against which the monument is set. The darkness of the door suggests an endless space, yet this impression is flatly contradicted by the shallow distance from the face of the pyramid to the wall behind it. In all respects we are made to think of this tomb as a reality in its own right and not as an accessory of the church.

The highly articulated rhythms, the perfect cadence of each drapery fold are suddenly and terrifyingly contrasted with the amorphous, impenetrable darkness of the gaping grave. Never had white marble been used more effectively to symbolize the radiant light of life. Never before has darkness been used a as dramatic protagonist, as a distinct and expressive substance in its own right.

As a consequence of the new vision of death, which is no longer considered a passage to life everlasting but a darkness about which the artist says nothing, the preserve of the deceased is reduced to a small medallion held aloft by two genii fluttering over the door

Instead of addressing us, all his figures turn away from where we stand. There can be no audience for the spectacle of death as Canova has conceived it. There can only be participants in the endless procession towards the grave.

Man’s fate is endless. It is not to be apprehended with terrestrial logic. Nothing can be learned from it and no consolation is at hand.

Rodin by Leo Steinburg

Rodin’s intuition is of sculptural form in suspension. He finds bodies that coast and roll as if on air currents, that stay up like the moon, or bunch and disband under gravitational pressures.

He seeks to create, by implication, a space more energetic than the forms it holds in solution.

Rodin’s unbodied heads – the masks mounted off base, tipped and angled – they seem not poised but propelled, discharged into space by the abstracted energy of gesture alone.

In the human hand, Rodin discovered the only familiar existence which has no inversions, no backviews or atypical angles; which can never be seen upside down.

The point is not so much that Rodin puts his sculptures through these revolutions, but that they lend themselves to inversions, as most figurative sculpture, conceived to rest on a supporting base, does not.

What enlivens Rodin’s forms is not only the vibration of surface modeling and the quickened light, but the implication always of some pressure or spatial turbulence to which these forms are exposed

Many of his figures are precariously balanced or hoisted, many have to do with falling, and then figures that gaze into abysmal depths, as if the ground at their feet were a nether sky.

This evasive relationship to a supporting ground marks a good half of Rodin’s conceptions, his casual doodles, and even his failures, as much as his great, humble masterworks. They share the disturbed equilibrium, or the vain drift to find the void at its center.

And then the opposite: the monumental statues that stand planted and rooted. For these figures it is the fierce grip on the earth that becomes the whole enterprise. For his mature works depart in opposite directions from the common waking experience of equilibrium: they are either disturbed, unsettled, adrift; or else they hold the ground with rapacious tenacity, as if they would lose their limbs one by one, rather than loosen their grip. And both of these extremes share in the power of suggesting that the surrounding emptiness is energetic.

Rodin’s implied space equips sculpture in three distinct ways for the modern experience.

Psychologically, it supplies a threat of imbalance which serves like a passport to the age of anxiety. Physically, it suggests a world in which voids and solids interact as modes of energy. And semantically, by never ceasing to ask where and how his sculptures can possibly stand, where in space they shall loom or balance, refusing to take for granted even the solid ground, Rodin unsettles the obvious and brings to sculpture that anxious questioning for survival without which no spiritual activity enters this century.

The singleness of man’s body allotment succumbs to three kinds of action – to multiplication, fragmentation, and random graft.

Multiplications are Rodin’s constant recourse, and if we do not know how they were prompted, we at least recognize the effect, which is always a redoubling of energy.

Multiplication generates new and more intricate rhythms of solids and intervals

Sometimes the duplications reflect Rodin’s avowed interest in expressing a succession of moments; for the repetition of identical or similar poses may suggest uninterrupted duration, or a single form evolving in time. What the sculpture gains is the potency of prolonged states.

What Rodin represents is not really a human body, but a body’s specific gesture, and he retains just so much of the anatomical core as that gesture needs to evolve

It is because of the comparative primacy given to movement, gesture, or act, that any unmoved part of the body becomes dispensable.

This principle of dispensability determines the limit of fragmentation. An anatomy can be stripped down so long as it yields a clear gesture. But the dispensability rule also hands us a criterion of judgment.

Energy – that excess flowing out at the fingertips, which drives some hands to drumming the table – kept him proliferating his race of figments till a thousand plasters lined and littered his ateliers.

No Rodin sculpture is known until it is known in its adaptability. Most of his works are constellations of interchangeable parts; and within his works are constellations of interchangeable parts; and within his enormous output you can play endlessly spotting the vagrants.

Rodin’s preferred material is bronze. But after the scandal aroused by the Age of Bronze, with its outright illusion of nakedness, his bronzes tended increasingly to forbid the analogy with smooth human flesh. Thenceforth, though they refer to humanity, they refer as intensely to the metal in its cold or heated state. Rodin’s modeling grows more emphatic, the leaps from elevation to trough become steeper, the transitions metal-edged.

Solid or molten – these are the modes of bronze and plaster, not those of flesh. Henceforth, Rodin’s best sculpture is about the materials of which it is made. It is also about the process of making them. In most of his subsequent works Rodin straddles the state of perfection by leaving them either unfinished or damaged.

Accident is one of Rodin’s resources for doubling the energy charge of his work. Breaks, cracks, and losses are violent. They imply the intractable and unforeseen, and that the artistic will drives its decisions against the brutal nonchalance of insensate matter.

For Rodin a work of art is no longer the sort of work that can be finished. It can only be abandoned, whether through distraction, discouragement, boredom, or competition calls.

In many of his late figurines, Rodin’s modeling blinds itself to external anatomy. His subtle acquaintance with human surface is set aside for a deepening, inward-turned acquiescence.

Accepting perfunctory surfaces and awkward limbs, they are oblivious of self and body, of style and beauty – to be only what the dance is.

Renaissance Art Paper

Select work of Italian Renaissance art: sculpture, architecture, or painting

Research basic context of work: where it is, why was it made (who commissioned it and why)

Write paper that includes:

• One full paragraph description and formal analysis
• One paragraph describing context of work, who commissioned it, why it was made, how it was displayed

Note: when writing the description and formal analysis, do not refer to the context of the work or the historical importance of the figures represented – just what you see and what you can interpret from that visual experience

Sculpture Paper Examples

The examples I modified from your sculpture papers and showed in class on Friday.

Degas, Fourteen Year Old Dancer

The sculpture is very realistic. It is not perfect, nor does it praise the beauty of the human form. On the contrary, the girl looks skinny, weak, and underdeveloped, but not to the extent to be perceived as grotesque or unnatural. The texture does not idealize the body of the girl, either. Instead of being smooth, the wax is rough and even unrealistically jagged, as is the texture of her dress and hair. She stands in a passive ballet pose, feet turned out with her right leg pressed forward, although her weight leans back. Her face is turned up, her eyes are closed and her lips are closed in a subtle frown. Her arms are joined behind her back, from the front she is an armless torso with legs, and she holds them in a self-conscious or impatient child’s pose.

Degas’ sculpture doesn’t present a ballet dancer with typical beauty, grace, or tenderness. Instead, he accomplishes a representation of the real world, an escape from the clichés that perfect everything to the point that reality starts being perceived as ugliness. The Fourteen Year-Old Dancer embodies her name well, her posture and Degas’ treatment of her form reflect the careless, carefree grace of a young girl, her body not yet developed or fully self-conscious of its femininity or power.

Dali, The Vision of the Angel

The sculpture is forty-four centimeters high and consists of a large-scale bronze thumb and fingernail, an angel, and a person. The figures are all bronze and the finger appears almost bluish-green. The size of the finger is approximately twice as large as the human, who is slightly bigger than the angel. The angel is sitting, bowed with his head resting in his hand. One of his wing’s is supported by a pin, a typical object in Dali’s art. At the center of the sculpture, a branch emerges from the finger. At the bottom of the thumb, some of the skin seems torn out and reveals a stone brick wall. The person also has branches sprouting from his head, arms, and back. The weight is supported on the left leg, where the left foot is missing and instead the leg is rooted to the ground. The person’s left arm is pointing up and right, extending into branches. The texture of the fingernail is sleek and shiny, while the rest of the sculpture is more rough and naturalistic. The person seems more roughly shaped, while the thumb and angel are relatively detailed. The finger and two figures look real even though the human’s body is not very detailed and he doesn’t have features on his face. The person’s musculature and posture suggests he is male even though no reproductive organs are shown.

Claudel, The Age of Maturity

The sculpture represents a man being taken away from a young woman by an older, winged woman. The man and winged woman stand on a slightly raised, subtly textured surface, and the younger woman kneels on a lower level, reaching for the man’s hands. The figures are naked, but the man’s privates are covered by a fabric wrapping around from the older woman. The modeling is not uniform throughout the sculpture, some features are more smoothly molded while others are rough and lack definition. His face is wrinkled in addition to being roughly textured, but his expression is calm and focused. The man’s right leg is in front of his left, supporting the weight of his body and making the figure look actively in motion. The old woman is behind him, reaching around and pulling on his arms. His left hand is still extended back to the kneeling woman, and his fingers still reach for her, but his movement away from her indicates that he this is the last point of contact. The young woman is kneeling on the ground, but her right knee is in front of her left knee, suggesting movement and her reaching for him combined with an effort to pull him back towards her if she had a solid grip on his hand.

Painting Checklist

Artist, Work 

Formal elements:

color

composition

texture

quality of brush strokes/application

lighting

size

subject matter

values/tonal variation

support/surface

space/perspective

viewing angle

Description will be about the use of these formal elements

Analyze how these formal elements affect the viewers understanding of the work

How does the artist use formal elements to give you initial emotional response

Thesis: How does the painting mean 

Imagine describing in a succinct way: dimensions, subject, arrangement à enable someone who can’t see it to see in the minds eye in 1st paragraph

Detail formal elements, figure out how they mean, conclude

Class 2 Lesson

§  Terms

▫   Contrapposto: an asymmetrical arrangement of the human figure in which the line of the arms and shoulders contrasts with while balancing those of the hips and legs.

▫   Frieze: a broad horizontal band of sculpted or painted decoration, esp. on a wall near the ceiling. Architecture: the part of an entablature between the architrave and the cornice.

▫   Kore: an archaic Greek statue of a young woman, standing and clothed in long loose robes.

▫   Kouros: an archaic Greek statue of a young man, standing and often naked.

▫   Metope: a square space between triglyphs in a Doric frieze.

▫   Pediment: the triangular upper part of the front of a building in classical style, typically surmounting a portico of columns.

▫   Polychromy: the art of painting in several colors, esp. as applied to ancient pottery, sculpture, and architecture.

▫   Relief: a method of molding, carving, or stamping in which the design stands out from the surface, to a greater ( high relief) or lesser ( bas-relief) extent.

▫   Stylization: depict or treat in a mannered and nonrealistic

Archaic, Early Classical and Classical Greek Sculpture

§  Greek Archaic Period: 6^th Century BC

▫   New York Kouros, c. 590 BC, marble, 6’ 4”, New York, Metropolitan Museum

▫   Kroisos, c. 530 BC, marble, 6’ 4”, Athens, National Museum

§  Early Classic Period: First Half, 5^th Century BC

▫   Kritios Boy, c. 480 BC, marble, 34”, Athens, Acropolis Museum

§  Greek Classical Period: Second Half, 5^th Century BC

▫   Polykleitos, Doryphoros (Spear Bearer)

¬       original bronze, c. 450 – 440 BC (lost)

¬       Roman copy, marble, 6’ 5”, Naples, Archaeological Museum

Sculpture of the Parthenon

§  Greek Classical Period: Second Half, 5^th Century BC

▫   Phidias and other sculptors: 438 – 432 BC

¬       metopes, battle scenes, 4’ 4”, marble

®     east: Gods and Giants

®     west: Grees and Amazons

®     north: Sack of Troy

®     south: Lapiths and Centaurs

¬       frieze, Panathenaic Procession, 3’ 7”, marble (one section in Paris, Louvre)

¬       West Pediment, Founding of Athens, marble

¬       East Pediment, Birth of Athena, marble, London, British Museum

¬       Interior: Phidias, Athena Parthenos, gold and ivory, colossal (destroyed)

▫   The Greek building is conceived as a three-dimensional entity complete on all sides and perfect unto itself. Moreover, care is normally taken so that the viewer perceives it as such. Thus, Greek buildings are not presented frontally, that is, on axis. Rather, whenever possible, the building is first presented from the diagonal, or at least from a position off-center, so that two adjacent sides are seen establishing clearly the three-dimensional integrity of the structure.

▫   The Parthenon centerpieces the birth of Athena and her struggle with Poseidon, portrayed in the pediments; the metopes depicted legendary battles and the fall of Troy; and around the cella walls was a frieze which represented the annual Panathenaic procession, which wound its way from the city up to the Parthenon.

▫   The Parthenon is unique in many ways, some obvious, some scarcely visible. Its design was strongly affected by Phidias’s gold-and-ivory cult image of Athena. For this 40-foot colossus, an immense cella was needed, over 60 feet in width, with a central aisle some 35 feet wide. The plan of the double-tiered dividing colonnades was an innovation: instead of merely running directly to the rear wall as was customary, the two colonnades are carried around the end of the naos, behind the statue along a U-shaped path, drawing the framing structure around the goddess.

▫   The design of the Parthenon resulted in almost paradoxical architectural effects. The colonnade is dense and corporeal, yet its columns soar in their slenderness. The huge entablature is monumental, yet carried so effortlessly that is seems almost to float. These effects are due, again, to the building’s unique proportions: the columns are more slender than any earlier example and, correspondingly, the entablature is unusually narrow, hence visually light.

▫   The entire temple floor rises gently toward the center in the subtlest of domical shapes. Further, nearly all the vertical elements, including the columns, lean inward. The inner faces of the cella walls are vertical, but the outer surface taper inward and the entrance doors to the cella are curved. Finally, the channels of the column flutes deepen gradually toward the top.

▫ 

  Summary of the time period:  What we accomplish in the Greek architectural periods is the beginning of the importance of the orders and the beginning of conceptualization about the perfection of architecture.  This fuels the classical language- this fuels Roman architecture… these time periods fuel everything.  The orders, in their Grecian form, are considered by some to be coarser and cruder than the Roman forms, but by others they are considered to be purer because they are the beginning, nearer to the source of pure architecture.  Whether you favor one opinion or the other, what we do experience visually in Greek architecture are columns that are more massive and squatter than the Roman form of that order.

Greek Sculpture: 4^th Century through Hellenistic

§  Greek 4^th Century Period: 4^th Century BC

▫   Praxiteles, Hermes, c. 330 – 320 BC, Roman copy, marble, c. 7’, Olympia, Museum

▫   ____, Aphrodite of Knidos, 350 – 340 BC, Roman copy, marble, 2.04 m, Vatican Museums

§  Hellenistic Period: 3^rd – 1^st Centuries BC

▫   Barberini Faun, c. 220 BC, marble, 7’ 5/8”, Munich, Glyptothek

▫   Nike of Samothrace, 200 – 190 BC, marble, 8’, Paris, Louvre

Early Byzantine Period: 5th – 6th Centuries A.D.

§  Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

▫   Its true greatness comes from the combination of the central unit with the complex figuration of forms that lie between it and the perimeter wall, the most important and adventurous of which are to the east and west. Here, twin half-domes billow out from beneath the high arches of the dome, doubling the extent of the central “nave.” Each half-dome rests on three arches supported by the main piers and two smaller piers at the outer edge of the building. Within the outer two of the three arches, in turn, small half-domed apses swing out, internally supported by two levels of arcading. To the east, a short barrel-vaulted forechoir opens to the brilliantly lit main apse; the corresponding bay to the west is occupied by the barrel vault over the main entrance. Thus the nave comprises three levels of vaulting: the dome, the two main half-domes, and the four smaller half-domes.

▫   The building does not develop uniformly in all directions, but only with bilateral symmetry. Therefore, even though it has an immense domed core, it also possesses a strong longitudinal axis, a central nave that dominates the interior within a peripheral zone of aisles and galleries that are screened off from the nave by the double levels of arcades mentioned above.

Romanesque, 11^th – 12^th Centuries

§  Sainte Foy, Conques

▫   French buildings of local stone, very monochromatic

▫   Round arches and pediments, but dramatically stretched out

▫   Strong sense of plane

▫   French buildings have twin towers

▫   Nave flanked by aisles, large transept causing crossing, aisles flanking transept, altar always in east end, elaborate east end with ambulatory which allowed pilgrims to walk down aisle and around transepts during service, beyond ambulatory are radiating chapels creating the chevets, extremely narrow in relation to height (medieval verticality), undecorated interior, barrel vault over nave, half barrel vaults over aisles to buttress

§  Church of the Magdalen, Vezelay

▫   Vezelay is particularly known for its sculpture and interior. The Classical detailing is similar to Cluny or Autun, more striking would be the simplification of the nave elevation. Between the nave arcade and the clerestory runs not an elaborate zone, but a broad expanse of plain masonry divided by a single classicizing cornice. As if to compensate for this plainness, Vezelay introduces red-and-white banded arches and it is covered not by a severe barrel vault but by a series of large cross vaults

▫   Each bay has round vault, piers are more complicated: cross-shaped core and 4 columns attached, two-story elevation in nave, clerestory windows, no barrel vault over nave, colorful Roman style, at crossing, architectural style changes, Romanesque nave at crossing, colonnettes appear (no vaults), church shifts to Gothic: pointed arches, rib vaults, colonnettes, etc.

▫   Christ in central portal in narthex

¬       Book of Ecclesiastes: Church constructed out of faithful, prophets, apostles, followers, Christ himself is the keystone

¬       Center portal in middle suggest figures above columns are figures who precede Christ and apostles, resting on side and central piece is a lintel with peoples of world summoned to Christianity, in center is St. Peter (first pope), ie: Church literally brings you to Christ

¬       3 archivolt

¬       Outside are decorations

¬       Center archivolt is zodiac and the eternal revolution of time, 12 labors of each month

¬       Peoples of world, must have some deformity

¬       At top is Christ, breaking inner ring of archivolt

¬       Christ enthroned, shown in halo-like form, oval shape, halo with cross, arms extended similar to crucifixion

¬       Throne to heaven, crucifixion brings salvation

¬       Scale is a measure of importance à Christ is largest

¬       Apostles closest to Christ have more windblown garments, rays streaming from figures

¬       Lintel frieze on central portal in narthex

®     Lintel: two processions coming to cneter, representing people of the world, to whom Christ’s word is spread

®     People with large ears need ears to hear the word of God

®     African pygmy climbing ladder to get on horse

®     Racist view of the rest of the world

Early Gothic: Mid-Late 12^th Century

§  Laon

▫   Cruciform plan, very wide and spacious, tall and filled with light

▫   Desire to build larger and brighter buildings leads to Gothic architecture

▫   technological innovation of rib vault, supports webbing and is light, no need for massive supports à thin verticals and room for clerestory windows

▫   Bundles of colonnettes and shafts rise to support transverse arches, ribs, alternating between number of shafts/colonnettes

▫   nave: 4 stories, capped by series of 6 part vaults, stabilized by buttress under roof and flying buttress

▫   Ground level columns/piers, pointed arches, verticality, 2nd level gallery is wide, 3rd level has slender colonnettes holding arches, triforium (dark area), windows in galleries and aisles but not triforium, 4th level clerestory

High Gothic: Late 12^th Century – Early 13^th Century

§  Chartres Cathedral

▫   The simplified vault reads with immediate clarity and caps a strikingly narrowed, soaring spatial unit

▫   The piers that frame the new bays are, correspondingly, no longer of alternating, disparate form, but uniformly tall and strong.

▫   Eliminating the gallery and maintaining the relative scale of the triforium allowed for the expansion of arcade and clerestory, particularly the latter, which along with the triforium, could be lowered into the gallery zone. The rigorous Chartres Master elected to increase arcade and clerestory equally and to fill the added clerestory area with a new subdivided window form, called tracery, in the shape of twin lancets surmounted by an oculus. This pattern was to be the basic tracery format throughout the Gothic period.

▫   The soaring proportions of the bay units reinforce the vertical drive of the piers, which is further accentuated by the upward thrust of arcade and window outlines. The vertical lines of energy are cut by strong horizontals, particularly by the strong, dark belt of the triforium that sweeps the interior exactly at midheight.

▫   The flying buttresses, if sufficiently developed, made the gallery redundant as lateral bracing. It is the powerful system of flying buttresses at Chartres that allows the skeletal nave walls to soar high and free. On the interior these buttresses are completely hidden, but on the outside they form a massing of great bulk. Tremendous exterior piers absorb the ponderous thrust channeled down from the vaults through three tiers of flying quadrant arches.

▫   Center Portal West, tympanum and lintel

¬       Top is Virgin and Christ

¬       Archivolts represent 7 liberal arts

¬       Center portal: frontal, columnar appearance of figures, no depth, but of building

¬       Church built out of various components

¬       Unification between sculpture and architecture

¬       Compare Chartres with Vezelay

¬       Figures are columnar, lend support

¬       Christ in Vezelay is flat, at Chartres, legs project out in 3-D sense, corporal nature of Christ and human figures

¬       Chartres Christ, halo with cross, flanked by 4 evangelists, surrounded by figures in archivolts, supported by apostles, quieter drapery, no expression in face à idealized calm