#emma lecture

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New Tech: The Machine and Mechanical Reproduction

 The final lecture of the semester! With special guest: Kipling’s Frosty Fancies

Cue The Final Countdown.

Our last lecture today was in the afternoon instead of the morning like it usually is as we were scheduled for a Christmas quiz but sadly it was cancelled.  However, this lecture more than made up for it as it was very intriguing for me. I’d looked into the Italian Futurists during my A-levels though I never knew there was a similar movement in the UK: The Vorticists which is who we looked at today alongside the Futurists as well as the influence of machine and war on the art world and film.

These two movements feel very intense when looking at their art and reading their manifestos. It’s all about war and speed and movement and breaking down everything to create a new start. It’s almost frightening to think that these people actively wanted war to happen as they believed it would be for the best for the world a restart button almost and then war did happen and it changed the world though not in the way they believed it was going to.

Helen Saunders ‘ Abstract Multicoloured Design’ (1915)

I think what draws me into this theme so much is that all this technology that we are so used to today was so new and had just started to integrate itself into society so they had all these ideas about what technology would be like in the future and how human and machine would coincide, including the prospect of humans becoming mechanised which we looked at today. I think also it’s similar to how the Romantics looked back to the simple time of their idyllic landscapes we look back now to the early 20th century at the beginnings of technology in the same quaint way, it was simple compared to the all-encompassing role machine plays in our lives today. 

The main takeaways I got from this lecture were that machinery greatly influenced society in Europe and that can be seen within these movements. It revolutionised how people thought and saw the world, you can still see this happening today with all developments happening so quickly in technology, we don’t know when to stop. 

But as always this lecture was very in-depth and I have felt that with all of Emma’s lectures; I learn so much and are introduced to so many new things. This I think is why I like these lectures as they always made me want to go research further and discover more.

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Tradition & Innovation in 15th Century Europe

Ending off our first teaching week at Uni, we were taught about 15th century Europe. It was the first lecture with Emma and you can see the difference in lecture styles between everyone we've had this week. Emma’s are more traditional I would say but I think that helps with this kind of module as we’re learning loads of new information (at least I am) compared to Julie’s lectures where we will be looking at theories on art and that leads to more discussion.

Going into this lecture I was excited, I love to learn new things and it was great, though a little overwhelming, to learn about artists and places I’d never heard of before. I especially liked the story about Brunelleschi’s cathedral in Florence  where he would only tell people how to create it if they could stand an egg upright and when none of them could he just whacked it on a table to make it stand. That’s the kind of stories I’m here for. 

Brunelleschi’s Cathedral Dome in Florence 

The whole lecture was extremely fun, I really enjoyed learning about traditional art styles and the introduction of perspective and other innovations that allowed art to develop and I can’t wait to learn more in the next few weeks!

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Artificiality and the Theatrical

This week Emma, unfortunately, couldn’t be there as she had work over in China, which is quite cool in amongst itself. So instead we had one of the level 3 students there to play us Emma’s pre-recorded video lecture so we didn’t miss out too much and could still ask questions if we needed to. The lecture started out with a small talk from someone from the wellbeing department about managing our money and how to get onto blackbullion. I think it’s very helpful that the University has many useful facilities that we can use.

Back to today’s lecture, we looked at mannerism and a bit of baroque. A few takeaways: Venice was Paradise and Florence was admired and the Rennaissance loved drawing from life. Compared to this mannerism was inspired by artists drawing from life such Michelangelo and his slight push away from life with his use of contrapposto and stark muscle. Mannerism as the name suggests created their own manner and pushed further away from real life, more dramatic, so you had people with long bodies and even longer necks. Though this was criticised by many. I find mannerism strange and doesn’t seem to fit into its time period, it faintly reminds me more of surrealism than any other works made around that time. 

Parmigianino, Madonna With The Long Neck, (1535-40)

We also looked at the other kind of dramatism in art, lighting. This was in the form of Caravaggio which I did already know some about as I had looked at his work during school, I was impressed with my self being able to recognise at least one artist. The lighting in his paintings is extremely theatrical and looks at the theme of twisted bodies/contrapposto also, but in a more realistic way. He studied directly from life, using the lower class as models which is something I hadn’t thought about before. I think in this sense he believed that his artwork would be more real and most likely it was cheap to use the people struggling on the street as models as they would want the money.

Carravagio, The Calling of Saint Matthew, (1600)

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Patronage, Process & Medium in 15th & 16th Century Europe

I was up and ready to go for the second of Emma’s lectures. By this point I think I’m finally getting into the swing of things though I always know little before going into the lectures. Such as today we looked at Italy during the 15th and 16th century and how the arts were funded.

Raphael, The School of Athens,(1501-1511)

This lecture started with something I never knew before which was that Italy before was split up into separate states with their own rulers and laws, and that directly affected the art that was being made in Italy. Such as the different states had different styles of art and used different mediums because the leaders of the states were constantly competing with each other. They were the patrons of art. I find it interesting to think that back in the day being a traditional artist was more like a job that you did for money rather than as a hobby; as most of the artwork made back then that we admire today had been commissioned by someone rather than an idea straight from the artists. Though it is also important to point out that the artist chose to paint how the painting looked even if not the idea. We continued to look at the ruling families of Itay such as the Medici and Gonzaga, these patron allowed artists to keep on practising and helped to develop art.

Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne,(1520-3)

These different states also changed in power through these centuries from Florence to Rome where we then discussed the well-known artists, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Cue theme song. Alongside them, we spoke about humanism and how emotion and drama were becoming more popular in art. Finally, we touched on medium, discussing the frescos and how the technique didn’t work well on canvas which led to the use of oil paints. Overall this lecture was helpful in learning the context around how art was made and why.

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Dutch Art!

Moving on from mannerism and the Baroque this week we were looking into a country in Europe we so far haven’t talked about, Holland. Immediately when I saw the title I was hooked mainly because my old History teacher was fascinated with Dutch art and how rebellious it was though it was simple scenes of everyday life. 

We spoke a little about the context behind Dutch art how during 1560-1640 Holland had been at war with Spain then after it finished and Spain left the north and the south had been split up with different ideas on religion which of course influenced the art. So the north was free of religious control and were Calvinist protestants whereas the south was still under catholic control.

The main two artists we looked at during this lecture was Rubens and Rembrandt who I had heard of before but only really by name so I was interested to know more. The art of theirs which we looked at today was mainly in relation to how it showed us what society was like at the time. Though in Rembrandt's place it was about how he would portray real townspeople rather than this idyll image of them or simply classical scenes which though this he was able to connect with everyone. In this, I also found that he would sell prints of his work for cheap so these working-class people who connected with his work could buy them which I suppose was a change in art and previously it was the either the rich or religions that bought art but now it was changing so that more people were becoming interested in owning art. I think this is a big change between the past and present how today everyone is aware of the art world when back then it wasn’t as big of a thing or that’s the sense I get anyway. 

We then moved onto the great land and seascapes of Dutch art. Nature became the forefront not just backdrop as people saw god in nature. The lecture was interesting to learn about and I’m happy I know more about Dutch art now.

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The Eighteenth Century: Rococo & Neo Classicism

This lecture was one of extravagance though that was mainly the subject manner as we were looking at Rococo and Neo-classism. 

It was the age of reason and enlightenment, new discoveries were happening and many of the rich took to the grand tour, or the rich families sent their sons on the grand tour and less enlightenment and more frivolous activities happened. Which really would you expect anything more? Still however throughout this period the look back at the classical era produced many exquisite architectural designs, sculptures and painting that we still appreciate today. Such as all those fancy manor houses with beautiful interiors and manicured gardens. We focused on the difference between the French gardens and the English gardens of this time also. Such when looking at French gardens they kept strict control how everything looked and the position of them vs the English gardens which focused on looking natural but still romantic.

Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles 

From the neo-classical, the arts turned even more decadent as it moved into Rococo which I can’t help but love even though it was self-indulgent and excessive to the point of madness. In France, at this time, the majority of the aristocracy were settled in the Palace of Versailles with their king and I think this is what fulled the oh so decadent nature of the Rococo period, everyone was trying to impress each other and outdo one another that it just got extreme and it had to stop somewhere. Which is where the French revolution came in. Today we look upon Rococo as almost ludicrous but we have that same urge to impress still just less with architecture and moe with technology.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard,’The Swing’ (1767-78) - The most recognisable Rococo work

At the end of this lecture, we also watched a documentary about Rococo which just made it sound unbelievably scandalous and extreme.

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Landscape & its Theoretical Readings

It’s Halloween! 

Ahh, the great wide countryside. Today’s lecture was the last of this module before reading week and also had the same energy as those one-off holiday episodes you see in tv shows, it more or less fits into the rest but also stands out. When the powerpoint came up I was really interested to see what kind of things we were going to be learning about, it felt like the sort of topic not many people know about but the ones who do are fanatic about it and let’s just say I was ready to become a fanatic.

We touched on many different areas within the lecture but what I found interesting was this whole idea of fear and control, that people saw God everywhere in nature and feared this, so to control this fear they attempted to control nature. The end result was these prim but beautiful gardens you see at many manor houses across the UK. But another reason for these was Romanticism. Cue the entrance of Capability Brown. Apart from the fact that his name is great (his original name was Lancelot by the way), this man was one landscape artist who took the sublime landscapes from Romanticism and the feeling from the grand tour and injected it into many of the rich’s landscapes all over Britain. Using their natural landscapes but making them fashionable. Are you sold yet?

Capability Brown’s Landscape At Chatsworth

Many new ideas were introduced into landscapes as society changed so did their views on landscapes, from ornamental vegetable gardens that were both useful and pretty to pre-made destroyed castles that harked back to the medieval ages and were all pretty no usefulness. Though I finally found out what a ha-ha was as I’d seen one over the summer when I visited Houghton Hall. 

A ha-ha: A ditch that forms a boundarybetween the manicured land and grazing land without inturupping the landscape.

The Ha-ha at Burghley Estate, also by Capability Brown (He was everywhere)

This lecture overall dived into the history behind landscapes and why people fell in love with them and wanted to have their own personalised landscape. And it’s interesting to think about the amount of control people needed to have in their lives and had this urge to control something as wild as nature I think it tells us something about the way humans are, as still in today's age we have this urge to control our image and how we present to others, especially thinking of social media we present this control in our lives but in reality, our lives are more like the landscape past the ha-ha than the cultured one before it.

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Symbolism & Iconography

Rounding out the first week back after reading week was Emma’s Symbolism & Iconography lecture which took us on a ride through many different art movements, the shocking, scandalous and crazed.