Midterm - History and Context PDF

**HISTORY AND CONTEXT** **The Prehistoric and Ancient Mediterranean** Human prehistory is the long period during which humans and their ancestors developed societies for which no written record has been found. We know about the achievements of these early people from the material traces they left...

**HISTORY AND CONTEXT** **The Prehistoric and Ancient Mediterranean** Human prehistory is the long period during which humans and their ancestors developed societies for which no written record has been found. We know about the achievements of these early people from the material traces they left behind. In Europe, this takes us back thousands of years---even 2.5 million years, if we include tools. These ancient people survived by gathering wild plants and hunting, and some found time to produce what we admire today as prehistoric art. Prehistoric art has been discovered in this region from as early as c. 40,000 BCE. As humans formed larger communities, the Mediterranean region---the ancient Near East, northern Africa, and southern Europe flourished as an area of trade. The region thrived because of being surrounded by bodies of water; frequently, the most powerful were those who controlled access to the seas. Here, a succession of civilizations arose that continue to shape the ways we live, even in the twenty-first century. It was here that humans first invented agriculture, started to live in urban settlements, and eventually planned cities; it was here that people invented writing, and produced works of art we still regard as great wonders of the world. The achievements of these people remain evident in our own lives. We write with an alphabet refined by the ancient Romans of Italy. Farmers who raise wheat crops today can do so because other farmers domesticated wheat and barley nearly 10,000 years ago. These achievements, which we generally describe as the beginning of civilization, were matched independently elsewhere, for example in Asia and the Americas. The developments in the Mediterranean, however, are also part of the history of the Americas because of the arrival there of Europeans more than 500 years ago. This chapter first tells the story of the sculptures, cave paintings, and palaces made by prehistoric Europeans. Then we will look at the emergence of early civilizations in the ancient Near East and the rise of a great civilization in Egypt. Lastly we will study the powerful societies of ancient Greece and Rome and the beautiful sculptures, paintings, and buildings they produced. **Prehistoric Art in Europe and the Mediterranean** As long as 40,000 years ago, prehistoric people painted the interiors of caves; and sculptures still survive from 5,000 years after that. Not surprisingly, such art is preoccupied with the basics of life: procreation and sources of food. Prehistoric artworks are particularly important records of the lives of our early ancestors, because written records of these cultures do not exist. Often what we know about them lives is based upon archaeological finds, and our modern interpretations of these discoveries. The earliest paintings in Europe are found on walls in El Castillo Cave in Spain. Dating is possible through scientific study of the calcite (a carbonate mineral frequently found in caverns) that has formed on top of the paintings. The calcite in El Castillo is at least 40,000 years old, so the paintings underneath may date from much earlier. Prehistoric humans often painted over previous images already on the wall. The very earliest paintings in this cave were red spheres, made by blowing pigment, in this case red ocher, through a reed. Humans often blew the pigment around their hand, creating an effect similar to a stencil. Later, people would use the same method to create images of animals they hunted. The most common type of prehistoric artworks found throughout the world are small female sculptures that suggest a preoccupation with fertility. Like other such "fertility figures," the Venus of Laussel shows a faceless woman with large breasts, belly, and vulva, signifying her fertility. Made approximately 25,000 years ago, the figure was carved into limestone and originally painted with red ocher. The carving is unique in that the woman holds a horn-shaped object that has thirteen short lines carved on it, which have led scholars to develop different opinions about the work. For example, the figure may represent a shaman and the horn could have been used for a ritual designed to ensure a successful hunt, or as a musical instrument. Other experts have suggested the horn may be a phallic symbol, emphasizing the woman's role for procreation. Further, as the number thirteen corresponds to the number of menstrual cycles a woman may have in a year, some scholars have speculated that the horn may symbolize a waning crescent moon, which, with the number of stripes, could be intended to represent a woman's monthly cycle. On the Cycladic Islands, now part of modern-day Greece, a number of human figures, carved out of white marble, have been found, many of them at grave sites. Cycladic sculptures of females far outnumber those of males. Curiously, however, the female Cycladic figures look similar to their male counterparts, with barely noticeable breasts and only minimal anatomical detail. The figures usually have a long head and protruding nose; they are generic renderings of females, rather than individual portraits. Originally, these figures were painted in black, red, and blue to show some facial details, body ornamentation, and probably jewelry. Because of the sculptor's emphasis on parts of the body related to reproduction, such as the slight swelling in the belly, many scholars believe these objects are fertility figures. It is thought that the smaller of these figurines, which would fit in one's hand, may have been carried around as a kind of talisman, or charm against bad luck. Little is known about the Cycladic culture because it did not have a written language, but these expressive, almost geometric figures are some of the most intriguing in the history of art. **MESOPOTAMIA: THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION** Mesopotamia, from the Greek for "the land between the rivers" (a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), includes the regions of modern Iraq and portions of Syria, Turkey, and Iran. Ancient Mesopotamia is often called the "Cradle of Civilization," for it was here that urban centers first developed as early as 4000 BCE. The earliest forms of writing, using pictograms, also developed in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BCE. Here too, in the rich land of the Fertile Crescent, complex irrigation systems enabled people to produce plentiful crops. Mesopotamia was frequently conquered by rulers desiring the wealth of its farmland. Amongst the many cultures that battled for control of the region were the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. **Sumerians** The Sumerian civilization was the first great power in Mesopotamia. By the third millennium BCE, under the Sumerians, a writing system evolved from pictograms: it was called cuneiform, and consisted of wedge-shaped symbols drawn with a reed "pen" in soft clay. The Sumerians also seem to have invented the wheel, which was probably first used to help potters make circular pots. The people of Mesopotamia worshiped many gods and goddesses (a practice known as polytheism) in temples or shrines located on huge ziggurats---stepped pyramid structures made of baked and unbaked mud bricks---which they constructed in the center of their communities. Ur was an important city of Sumer, and the treasures found at its Royal Cemetery reveal the wealth of the Sumerian elite. Buried with the bodies were gold jewelry and daggers inlaid with lapis lazuli. Whether the dead were royalty or religious leaders is unknown, but the chariots, weapons, and musical instruments buried with them indicate their importance. Servants and soldiers were also interred with their leaders, perhaps to protect and serve them in the afterlife. The artists of Sumer excelled in the art of inlaying ivory and shell in wood, as seen in the Standard of Ur found in the Royal Cemetery of Ur. When it was first discovered, scholars thought it must have been carried on the end of a pole, like a standard, but there is no real evidence for this. The wooden box is only 8 in. high and decorated with inlaid pieces of shell, lapis lazuli, and red limestone. One side of the box shows war scenes, while the other shows life during times of peace. Each side is divided into three sections, known as registers. The bottom register of the war side shows chariots running over the bodies of the enemy. In the middle register, the box shows soldiers (from left to right) marching, shaming their enemies by stripping them of their clothing, and forcing them to continue walking. In the center of the top register is the ruler. **Akkadians** The next Mesopotamian empire was founded by the Akkadian king Sargon, who ruled between c. 2334 and 2279 BCE. He conquered the Sumerian city-states. Before King Sargon, most rulers of Mesopotamia were believed to be merely representatives of the gods on Earth. The Akkadian rulers who followed Sargon, however, elevated themselves to divine status. The bronze, lifesized Akkadian Head is the portrait of a great king, probably Sargon's grandson Naram-Sin (c. 2254--2218 BCE). The figure's expression is one of proud majesty. The artist paid particular attention to the texture and patterning of the hair on the ruler's beard, eyebrows, and head. The eye sockets have been damaged from violent gouging, either to remove the materials (probably shells or lapis lazuli) used to make the eyes, or to make the figure's presence less powerful. The head was originally discovered in Nineveh in northern Iraq, and was one of the many objects missing after the looting of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad in 2003 during the US invasion of Iraq. More than 15,000 artifacts were stolen, of which fewer than half have been recovered---this Akkadian head being one of them. **Assyrians** The Assyrians, who had intermittently enjoyed considerable power in the second millennium BCE, ruled much of Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period (883--612 BCE). The first great Assyrian king, Ashurnasirpal II (who ruled between 883 and 859 BCE), used slave labor to build the large city of Nimrud (near modern Mosul, Iraq), which became the capital of Assyria. Ashurnasirpal II's grand palace was covered with relief sculptures of battles, hunting scenes, and religious rituals. An accompanying inscription refers to guardian figures (called lamassu) at gateways and entrances throughout the palace: "Beasts of the mountains and the seas, which I had fashioned out of white limestone and alabaster, I had set up in its gates. I made it \[the palace\] fittingly imposing." These figures were meant to show the fearsome power of the Assyrian ruler and the authority given to him by the gods. Almost twice as tall as a human, this lamassu combines the head of a man with the body and strength of a lion and the wings and allseeing eyes of an eagle. The horned cap signifies divinity, representing the gods' support and protection of the rulers of Assyria. Lamassu often have five legs, so they appear to be standing still when viewed from the front and striding forward when seen from the side. The lion is an animal that is often associated with kingship, and at this time in this civilization, only Assyrian kings were considered powerful enough to protect the people from the lions that roamed the areas outside the cities, and only kings were allowed to hunt the creatures. Some of the reliefs decorating Ashurnasirpal II's palace show the king hunting lions. **Ancient Egypt** At the time of the pharaohs, or Egyptian kings, the African land of Egypt traded with peoples throughout the Mediterranean, and thus many of the ideas and techniques invented by Egyptian artists were taken up by Mediterranean civilizations. Indeed, some thousands of years after they were made, the ancient Egyptians' extraordinary artistic and architectural achievements continue to be a source of wonder and astonishment worldwide. It is perhaps appropriate that our fascination with Egyptian art should be so long-lasting when so much of early Egyptian culture focused on eternity and the afterlife. The Egyptians believed that their pharaohs ruled with the authority of gods, and as a result, the Egyptian people took great care to ensure that, when a pharaoh died, his needs in the afterlife---where it was believed a person would require everything he or she had needed when living---would be met. So in the pharaohs' tombs were buried furniture, weapons, jewelry, and food. Family and servants were even killed to accompany the dead pharaohs, although as time went on the Egyptians came to believe that art portraying these objects and people would be enough. When a pharaoh died, in order to preserve his body for its afterlife, it was mummified, a process that took several months. The heart was left inside the body; Egyptians believed it to be the organ of thought and therefore necessary for the body to exist in the afterlife. The brain was deemed to be of no value and was removed through the nostrils. The liver, lungs, intestines, and stomach were also removed, and preserved in containers called canopic jars. The body was then soaked in a salt preservative called natron (a hydrated carbonate of sodium, found on some lake borders) for forty days and was finally wrapped in linen. An elaborate funerary mask was placed upon the face of the pharaoh, and he was buried inside layers of sarcophagi. These complex burials were meant to protect the treasure and life force, or **ka,** of the buried. The great investment of time, labor, and wealth that was involved in creating the pyramids demonstrates further the importance the Egyptians placed on the afterlife. The three pyramids at Giza were built to house the tombs of three Egyptian pharaohs: Khufu, his son Khafre, and Menkaure, son of Khafre. Construction on Khufu's pyramid, the largest of the three at 481 ft. high and 750 ft. per side, began about 2551 BCE, and all three were completed over three generations. The sides of each pyramid are precisely the same length and all are placed precisely at the cardinal points, revealing the Egyptians' mastery of engineering and mathematics. The pyramids were built of carefully stacked stones clad in white limestone. The pyramid of Khufu contains about 2,300,000 blocks of stone that have been calculated to weigh on average 2.5 tons. The methods used by the Egyptians to move such massive stones are still debated today, although scholars have suggested that they probably used the Nile for transportation, then either dragged the stones across the sand or rolled them over a series of logs. Once the stones made it to the site, tumbling, systems of levers, and ramps were likely used. Connected to Khafre's pyramid through an underground walkway is Khafre's temple, next to which is a colossal stone sculpture of a Sphinx, a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human ruler. As in Assyrian culture, the image of the lion was in part an expression of royal power, but for the Egyptians it was also a symbol of the sun god, Re, who was believed to carry away in his boat the dead to their afterlife. One theory is that the pyramids themselves may also have been seen to represent Re; for when the sun could be seen at the apex of a pyramid, the pyramid glistened and reflected the light of the sun. According to this theory, the corners of the pyramid extended the rays of the sun, and thus symbolically represented a ladder for the pharaoh to ascend to the afterlife. The funerary temples of these three pharaohs were placed on the east side of the pyramids, to symbolize that, just as the sun rises again in the east, they would be reborn into the afterlife. The image shows the statue of the pharaoh Khafre, which was found in the pharaoh's temple. When Khafre died, his body was taken to his temple and mummified before being taken to his pyramid. In this statue, Khafre and the chair in which he sits have been carved from a single block of hard stone called diorite. He seems to sit stiffly, as if attached to his throne. Egyptian sculptures portrayed people with gracefully proportioned bodies, but they only subtly suggested movement, in this case by showing one hand clenched in a fist. To signify the pharaoh's importance, the powerful sky god Horus, symbolized as a falcon, perches on the throne behind his head. In Egyptian belief, Khafre's statue provides a place for his **ka** to rest during the afterlife. In fact, in Egyptian writing, "sculptor" translates as "he who keeps alive." The Egyptians invented a system of writing using hieroglyphs and often carved or painted them on their artworks. Egyptian hieroglyphs were gradually deciphered after the finding of the Rosetta Stone in 1799. This single discovery made possible a much greater understanding and appreciation of the art and culture of Egypt. More than 100 years later, the revelation in 1922 of the extraordinary riches hidden within the tomb of Tutankhamun fueled renewed interest in the ancient dynastic culture (see Perspectives on Art Box: The Golden Mask of King Tutankhamun. **Etruscan Art** During the sixth century BCE, the Etruscans were successful seafarers and traders who lived in central Italy, and formed the first urban civilization in the northern Mediterranean. Despite their prosperity, the Etruscans were eventually conquered by the Romans around 500 BCE. We understand much about Etruscan funerary customs because they built necropolises, or large cemeteries, containing hundreds of tomb chambers, which were filled with sculptures, or decorated with images of objects. The Etruscans were also very talented metalworkers; many intricate objects for personal use, such as gold jewelry and bronze mirrors, have also been found in the tombs in Italy, and must have been buried with the deceased. These indicate that, like the ancient Egyptians, the Etruscans believed that all of these things would be needed in the afterlife. Large Etruscan tomb chambers, often containing the remains of generations of one family, were buried within mounds made of raised dirt and limestone. The tomb chambers were designed to mimic Etruscan houses, and portrayed settings in which celebrations could be held in the afterlife. The painting in the Tomb of the Leopards shows a banquet in which men (portrayed as dark-skinned) and women (portrayed as light-skinned) are enjoying music, food, and drink. Etruscan women held a higher status within their own culture than other women were afforded in the ancient world. This is reflected here by their placement as equals, lounging with their husbands. **Roman Art** The first evidence of a settlement at Rome dates back to about 900 BCE. This small village grew to become the center of an enormous empire that, by the year 117 CE, covered much of Europe, northern Africa, and large parts of the Middle East. In the process of conquering such large territories, the Romans absorbed many cultures, frequently adopting the gods of other peoples but giving them Latin names. The Roman emperors often associated themselves with qualities of the gods, and successful leaders were often deified after they died. Another example of Roman absorption of other cultures was their adoption of the Corinthian architectural order developed by the Greeks. The Romans also used Greek methods to create ideal proportions in their architecture. At the center of each Roman city was a forum, or marketplace, which was surrounded by temples, basilicas, and civic buildings. Emperors made a public show of their power by commissioning architects to create grand arches and tall columns, which usually celebrated the rulers' triumphs in battle. Statues of the current emperor were also distributed throughout the empire The Romans greatly admired Greek bronze sculptures and often remade them in marble. While the Greeks celebrated the idealized human body and mostly portrayed nude gods and mythological heroes, Roman art focused instead on emperors and civic leaders, who were usually portrayed clothed in togas or wearing armor. Roman sculpture often portrayed the individual character of its subject with recognizable, rather than ideal, facial features. Aged members of Roman society were portrayed---and viewed---as wise and experienced, particularly in political settings. Roman artists recognized individuals' accomplishments with naturalistic, lifelike portraits often made from death masks. Family members treasured such portraits as recording their loved one's likeness and character. In a Roman citizen proudly displays the busts of his ancestors in order to reinforce his own social standing. His face shows individuality, and he wears clothing appropriate to his status. The catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE buried the buildings of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in a matter of hours under some 60 ft. of volcanic ash. This unique act of accidental preservation has given us, centuries later, an incomparable opportunity to witness how Romans lived in their homes. Frescoes covered the walls of many rooms in the houses in Pompeii. Some of the paintings offer convincing illusions of landscape scenes. Some of the interiors are covered with what appear to be marble panels, but which in reality are only painted. One such room is covered with scenes believed to describe rituals relating to the worship of Dionysus, the god of wine, ecstasy, agriculture, and the theatre. Excavation of Pompeii began in the eighteenth century, and the remarkable discoveries there stimulated interest in ancient art throughout Europe. One of the Romans' most impressive works of architecture is the Pantheon ("Temple of all the Gods"). It was originally constructed in the first century BCE. Emperor Hadrian had it rebuilt from c. 118 to 125 CE in order to enhance his own status. The entrance facade is a pediment atop Corinthian columns. Once inside, one is standing under a spectacular coffered dome 143 ft. in diameter and 143 ft. from the ground. The dome was made possible by the Romans' revolutionary use of concrete and their engineering genius. In the center of this dome is an oculus, or eye, open to the skies. One can tell the season and time of day by where the sunlight hits the interior. Any rain coming in runs quickly away into a central drain because the entire floor slopes gradually. The enormous Arch of Constantine was built between 312 and 315 CE by the Emperor Constantine to commemorate the military victory (the Battle of the Milvian Bridge) that would ensure his future position as sole ruler of the empire. Constantine proclaimed his place in history, and there with his greatness, by placing the arch close to the famed Colosseum, built by an earlier family of powerful emperors. Constantine also had sculpture removed from other imperial monuments, often erasing the faces of previous emperors from such statues and replacing them with his own likeness; he then had the sculptures placed upon the triumphal arch. By doing so, he proclaimed both his lineage to previous great emperors and his belief in his superiority over them. Constantine associated himself with Apollo and other pagan gods, as well as with Christianity. He became known as Constantine the Great, and would eventually make it legal to practice all religions, opening the doors for Christianity to grow into the primary religion of the empire. He was baptized as a Christian on his deathbed. **THE MODERN AESTHETIC: MANET IN 1863 TO THE AMERICAN SCENE IN THE 1930S** **ART ACADEMIES AND MODERNISM** Much of the art of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century that is most familiar to us today is often from experimental artists, pushing traditional boundaries and fighting against long-held artistic conventions with a view toward conveying the spirit of their time. Modernism itself is often defined as a movement that essentially broke with tradition. It is important to remember that much of the art respected today was considered shocking in its time, particularly to those who admired artists using classic conventions established and maintained by the Art Academies. Often, these were government-sponsored institutions, set up to train artists to produce work in a particular style and following certain prescribed ideas about what was suitable subject matter for artworks. Indeed, modern artists were often held up for comparison, frequently in a negative manner, with those who were supported and exhibited by the academic system. By the end of the nineteenth century, this division led to artists establishing new avenues for selling and exhibiting their artworks outside of the traditional Salon. The contrast between art produced within the traditions established by the Academy and the work of artists experimenting with other forms of representation can be understood by comparing two very different French paintings from 1863. Alexandre Cabanel's Birth of Venus is an example of the kind of work that was highly appreciated in academic circles. A nude Venus, the mythical Greek goddess of love, lounges invitingly on the ocean, her sensual body on full display, offered submissively to the viewer's gaze, her eyes almost covered by her arm, and barely open. Flying young boys, known as putti, accompany her, creating a fluttering decorative "ribbon" above her reclining form. **IMPRESSIONISM** The artists who came to be called Impressionists worked in individual, sometimes very different, styles, but they were united in rejecting the formal approach of the art taught in the Academy. Their art attempted not so much to portray exactly and realistically such scenes as a landscape or life in a city (although they did depict those subjects), as to capture the light and sensations produced by the scene. The Impressionists formed a group to show their work together outside the official Salon, in eight exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886. Their subject matter was scenes of everyday life: rural landscapes, and life in the modern and growing cities of France---especially scenes of the middle classes engaged in leisure pursuits, as seen in Manet's Luncheon on the Grass. The Impressionists were often intent on capturing the essence of moments in time, and many of them painted en plein air (outdoors), made possible by the advent of tubed containers for oil paint. Before the Impressionists, artists who followed traditional methods of painting gave their work a smooth surface, often finishing paintings with a topcoat of varnish, so that the application of the paint was not evident. Impressionists, on the other hand, chose to reveal their brushstrokes. The almost sketchy, unfinished appearance of many Impressionist works breaks away from the academic tradition of simply creating an illusion of three-dimensional space on the canvas. Instead, Impressionists flattened space, welcomed visible texture, and often allowed the canvas to be seen beneath the painting. Edgar Degas (1834--1917) was a prolific artist who reveled in experimentation in a variety of media, including pastel, charcoal, oil, photography, lithography, and sculpture. He was interested in the careful observation of characters from daily life, and also studied anatomy through photography using methods similar to Eadweard Muybridge and Thomas Eakins. Degas is well known for his paintings and pastels of female subjects, including laundresses, prostitutes, singers, and bathers. One of his favorite subjects was ballet dancers, whom he studied not only during performances, but also during practice, tretching, and backstage. Degas's scenes of dancers, in both public and private settings, evoke the everyday quality of a dancer's life, and his composition gives the impression of immediacy, as if the viewer has caught the dancers off guard, primping before their performance. The artist masterfully uses the medium of pastel, essentially drawing on the surface (rather than using a paintbrush), to create a rich texture in which light bounces off the flesh of the dancers and their dresses. Degas's Blue Dancers also demonstrates a fascination with Japanese prints, which he shared with other Impressionists. By the time this painting was made, in 1897, French steamships had begun to import artworks from places previously unknown, as far away as Japan, which had only just opened its borders to trade in 1853. The woodblock prints by Japanese masters, for sale in Paris, featured sections of solid color and a lack of shading, as well as flat, rather than three-dimensional, images. These prints inspired Impressionists to flatten the visual depth in their works also, through the use of cropping, asymmetry, texture, unique or unusual vantage points, and layering of objects. **POST-IMPRESSIONISM** By the 1880s, the once-revolutionary Impressionism had gained great public popularity amongst the newly risen middle class. Yet the Academy critics accused the Impressionists of lacking discipline and training, and of having no intellectual substance other than a shallow preoccupation with the depiction of beauty. Impressionist artists responded to these criticisms in different ways: Monet developed his serial approach, in which he analyzed atmosphere rather than subject matter; Renoir returned to Classical models and created a series of bathers. The movement that resulted, that of Post-Impressionism, consisted of artists who had been exposed to, and often participated in, the Impressionist movement, but who wanted to differentiate themselves from what was then perceived to be the simplicity of the Impressionists. They preferred instead to emphasize abstract qualities or subjective content in their artworks. The French painter Paul Cézanne (1839-- 1906) developed a new type of landscape painting through intense study of Mont Sainte-Victoire, a mountain he could see from his studio (and childhood home) in Aix-en Provence, where he worked for much of his adult life. Cézanne made several paintings of this mountain, working on some of them for years. By gradually adding brushstrokes to reflect the mountain's changing atmosphere and weather conditions, Cézanne sought to construct the essence of the mountain as it appeared over time, rather than at a single moment. Cézanne created the structure of his landscape in a very different way from earlier painters. He conceived a view of nature in which the subject was analyzed from multiple views, forms became abstracted, and planes shifted. For example, Cézanne utilized his understanding of atmospheric perspective to blend warm and cool colors within the same structure, as in the mountain. This creates a push--pull effect for viewers, as the warm hues of the mountain come toward us, and cool colors recede. The tree in the foreground creates a similar experience as we look at it, a feeling of being pulled into the depth of the painting and then being pushed forward, as if the image has been flattened. The upper branch seems to echo the outline of the distant mountain, bringing it closer to us. The French painter Paul Gauguin (1848-- 1903) was a successful stockbroker, but at the age of thirty-five gave up his career to become a painter. Modern civilization was, in Gauguin's view, materialistic and lacking in spirituality. This belief led him to seek to portray people whom he considered pure, untouched by materialistic values. The Vision after the Sermon shows the pious people of the small town of Pont-Aven dressed in their Sunday clothes. The scene in the upper right depicts the sermon the townspeople have just heard, that of the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. The spaces are abruptly flattened, the figures lack volume and are closely cropped. Yet rather than just showing a scene from everyday life, Gauguin expresses what is in these people's minds: a vision. The way the tree slices the scene in two (one section for the dreamers and one for the dream) is a device Gauguin observed in Japanese prints. Some scholars believe that Gauguin depicted himself as the figure with closed eyes in the lower right of the canvas, as if he too is experiencing a vision. Gauguin once said, "I shut my eyes in order to see." The bold red charges this image with a vivid power that speaks to the intense spirituality of the women and the drama of their vision, but also suggests the violence of the struggle they are witnessing between Jacob and the angel. Gauguin's ability to use color as an expressive element would greatly influence later artists, particularly the Symbolists After leaving Pont-Aven in 1888, Gauguin shared a house with the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853--1890) for two months in the southern French town of Arles. The two artists challenged and annoyed one another. While Van Gogh envisioned an artistic exchange, a brotherhood of painters, Gauguin made it clear that he felt his work was superior to the gentler Van Gogh's. Van Gogh's mood fluctuated between pure joy in their working closely alongside each other and frustration at Gauguin's intense bouts of criticism and anger. Shortly before Christmas of the same year, Vincent van Gogh was hospitalized for slicing off his left ear lobe, and after this, he and Gauguin never spoke again. Gauguin took his desire to study people of a pure and "primitive" nature to Tahiti, while Van Gogh remained in France. Famous to us now, yet largely unremarked upon in their time, the paintings of Vincent van Gogh express strong emotions. Yet, unlike Gauguin, Van Gogh claimed he could not invent images, but instead painted emotion into what he saw. He once stated: Famous to us now, yet largely unremarked upon in their time, the paintings of Vincent van Gogh express strong emotions. Yet, unlike Gauguin, Van Gogh claimed he could not invent images, but instead painted emotion into what he saw. He once stated: Van Gogh, who struggled with mental illness all his life, painted Starry Night during a stay in an asylum; the scene includes elements of the real-life view from his window. The artist infused the scene with his own emotions: one can sense the very physical act of applying the thick paint (impasto), and Van Gogh's energy, in swirls that show movement in the sky and the light emanating from the stars. A cypress tree, resembling flames reaching up to the sky, fills much of the left side of the canvas. The church in the distance may hint at Van Gogh's personal trials with religion; some believe it relates to his childhood church in The Netherlands. His use of color and form expresses his emotional suffering; in 1890, the year after this painting, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver and died two days later. It may seem incredible now, but Van Gogh considered himself an artistic failure, having sold only one artwork his entire life; his immense popularity did not occur until long after his death. It is thought that his wife, Johanna, was principally responsible for ensuring his art became recognized: she kept a complete collection of his works for almost twenty years after he died. By 1906 Van Gogh's art was beginning to be exhibited more frequently, and by the 1950s he was acknowledged to be an important artist. His fame grew, and by the late twentieth century his paintings had become amongst the highest-priced artworks in history, selling for up to \$82.5 million. Henri Rousseau's (1844--1910) The Sleeping Gypsy portrays a sleeping woman lying in the middle of a desert as she is approached by a powerful lion. The scene is at once mysterious and jarring, as one cannot help but fear for the safety of the sleeping gypsy. She is presented in an unrealistic manner, as if floating in front of the land rather than lying on it, and covered in stripes that seem to hide her form. She lies both above and beside her instrument and a vessel for water. The bizarre presence of the lion, the perfect full moon, and the abstraction of form suggest that the scene itself may be a dream.