Pieter Saendrelam-The Interior of the Grote Kerk at Haarlem (1636)
Distinctive whitewashed church interiors (Gothic and Later Romanesque), but those which had been stripped bare during the iconoclasm of the Protestant Reformation. He memorialises religious upheaval through these careful depictions.

Ink and Bleach
Transparency Film

Kyoko Kumai

Modernism-increasing insistence on the separateness of art. Preoccupation with form, design, colour and the flat painted surface.

"The representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful; always it is irrelevant. For, to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions. Art transports us from the world of man's activity to a world of aesthetic exaltation. For a moment we are shut off from human interests; our anticipations and memories are arrested; we are lifted above the stream of life." Clive Bell, Art, 1914

vs Bernard Smith, who demanded for this type of art to be renamed the Formalesque, as later movements such as Dada sought to clarify this aesthetic with meaning.

Ilya Repin, Saint Nicholas Saves Three Innocents from Death, 1888

Thematic approach to categorising paintings
French Royal Academy 1648

highest: historical painting for its moral purpose and the demands it made on the artist both in imagination and intellect.
lowest:still life, which was seen as imitation of reality observed by any.


Nicolas Poussin, 'et in arcadia ego', 1637-8

Genres are not so clear-cut; allegory can appear even in still life painting, raising its moral value.

Willem van Haecht, The Art Gallery of Cornelis van der Gheest (1628)
described by Rubens as "my never-failing patron"
all works appear to belong to him, from the 15th century onwards.
Cornelis van der Gheest himself is pointing to the painting of Madonna and Child by Quentin Massys, during a visit of Albert and Isabella of the Southern Netherlands.


Visari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects where his biographical approach was also documented in terms of progression from the flat Byzantine painting of the 13th century to triumphs of those like Raphael and Michelangelo.

qualia

horror vacui


Oscar de Las Flores, “A Brief History of the Western World, Chapter 2

Read more: http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/art/26388/oscar-de-las-flores-a-brief-history-of-the-western-world-chapter-2#ixzz0RBSU5zjY

Paul Noble

Apocalyptic Landscapes

John Martin



Glenn Brown

Courbet-The Origin of the World.

Max Ernst- Europe after the Rain (1940-2)
'grattage'-scratched through layers of oil paint to reveal brighter pigments beneath darker superimposed surface colours. act of painting becomes a more automatic process.
almost grotesque and unnatural ecological deformities hint at a post-nuclear era.