Cone Beaker
Cone Beaker, possibly England or Northern France or Germany,
400-599. 66.1.247.
This beaker was reportedly found at Acklam, Yorkshire,
England, in 1892. Large conical beakers with pointed bottoms like this one
could not stand on their own and were likely passed hand-to-hand among multiple
drinkers.
Aestheticism
Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic Movement) is an intellectual and art movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than social-political themes for literature, fine art, music and other arts. This meant that art from this particular movement focused more on being beautiful rather than having a deeper meaning — "art for art's sake".
It was particularly prominent in Europe during the 19th century, supported by notable figures such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, but contemporary critics are also associated with the movement, such as Harold Bloom, who has recently argued against projecting social and political ideology onto literary works, which he believes has been a growing problem in humanities departments over the 20th century.
In the 19th century, it was related to other movements such as symbolism or decadence represented in France, or decadentismo represented in Italy, and may be considered the British version of the same style.
The British decadent writers were much influenced by the Oxford professor Walter Pater and his essays published during 1867–68, in which he stated that life had to be lived intensely, with an ideal of beauty. His text Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) was very well regarded by art-oriented young men of the late 19th century.
Writers of the Decadent movement used the slogan "Art for Art's Sake" (L'art pour l'art), the origin of which is debated.
The artists and writers of Aesthetic style tended to profess that the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages. As a consequence, they did not accept John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, and George MacDonald's conception of art as something moral or useful, "Art for truth's sake". Instead, they believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it only needed to be beautiful. The Aesthetes developed a cult of beauty, which they considered the basic factor of art. Life should copy Art, they asserted. They considered nature as crude and lacking in design when compared to art. The main characteristics of the style were: suggestion rather than statement, sensuality, great use of symbols, and synaesthetic/Ideasthetic effects—that is, correspondence between words, colors and music. Music was used to establish mood.
Predecessors of the Aesthetics included John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and some of the Pre-Raphaelites who themselves were a legacy of the Romantic spirit. There are a few significant continuities between the Pre-Raphaelite philosophy and that of the Aesthetes: Dedication to the idea of ‘Art for Art’s Sake’; admiration of, and constant striving for, beauty; escapism through visual and literary arts; craftsmanship that is both careful and self-conscious; mutual interest in merging the arts of various media. This final idea is promoted in the poem L’Art by Théophile Gautier, who compared the poet to the sculptor and painter. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones are most strongly associated with Aestheticism. However, their approach to Aestheticism did not share the creed of ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ but rather “a spirited reassertion of those principles of colour, beauty, love, and cleanness that the drab, agitated, discouraging world of the mid-nineteenth century needed so much.”
This reassertion of beauty in a drab world also connects to Pre-Raphaelite escapism in art and poetry.
In Britain the best representatives were Oscar Wilde and Algernon Charles Swinburne, both influenced by the French Symbolists, and James McNeill Whistler and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The style and these poets were satirized by Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Patience and other works, such as F. C. Burnand's drama The Colonel, and in comic magazines such as Punch, particularly in works by George Du Maurier.
Compton Mackenzie's novel Sinister Street makes use of the type as a phase through which the protagonist passes as he is influenced by older, decadent individuals. The novels of Evelyn Waugh, who was a young participant of aesthete society at Oxford, describe the aesthetes mostly satirically, but also as a former participant. Some names associated with this assemblage are Robert Byron, Evelyn Waugh, Harold Acton, Nancy Mitford, A.E. Housman and Anthony Powell.
Artists associated with the Aesthetic style include Simeon Solomon, James McNeill Whistler, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Aubrey Beardsley. Although the work of Edward Burne-Jones was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery which promoted the movement, it also contains narrative and conveys moral or sentimental messages hence it falls outside the given definition.
The primary element of Decorative Art is utility. The maxim "art for art's sake", identifying art or beauty as the primary element in other branches of the Aesthetic Movement, especially fine art, cannot apply in this context. Decorative art must first have utility but may also be beautiful. Decorative art is dissociated from fine art.
Look at these wonderful faces...
Merry, 1893, John Everett Millais
Girl with the Cornflowers, Alexey Venetsianov
Family portrait, 1635, Frans Hals
Love it!
Five watercolors attributed to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler failed to sell at auction this weekend, possibly over fears they could be fakes.
The Nuremberger Nachrichten newspaper reported Sunday that no bids were received on the paintings, which had starting prices of between 19,000 euros ($21,500) and 45,000 euros ($50,900).
Three days before Saturday's auction, prosecutors reportedly seized 63 other paintings attributed to Hitler from the auction house to investigate allegations they were fakes.
In Berlin last month, prosecutors seized three other Hitler watercolors after receiving a complaint questioning their authenticity.
As a young man, Hitler is thought to have painted a number of pictures as he unsuccessfully struggled to succeed as an artist in Vienna prior to World War I. He twice failed the entrance exam to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, in 1907 and 1908.
American and British soldiers found many Hitler drawings in the ruins of German government buildings after World War II, as Fox News previously reported. Sotheby’s in London offered Hitler drawings for sale in the 1960s. Over the years, several auctions have been conducted in England and Germany.
Fox News' Don Snyder and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Bay of Naples, Ivan Aivazovski
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817
– 1900) was a Russian Romantic painter
who is considered one of the greatest masters of marine art. Baptized as
Hovhannes Aivazian, he was born into an Armenian family in the Black Sea port
of Feodosia in Crimea and was mostly based there.
Following his education at the
Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, Aivazovsky traveled to Europe and
lived briefly in Italy in the early 1840s. He then returned to Russia and was
appointed the main painter of the Russian Navy. Aivazovsky had close ties with
the military and political elite of the Russian Empire and often attended
military maneuvers.
He was sponsored by the state and was
well-regarded during his lifetime. The saying "worthy of Aivazovsky's
brush", popularized by Anton Chekhov, was used in Russia for describing
something lovely. He remains highly popular in Russia.
One of the most prominent Russian
artists of his time, Aivazovsky was also popular outside Russia. He held
numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and the United States. During his almost
60-year career, he created around 6,000 paintings, making him one of the most
prolific artists of his time.
The vast majority of his works
are seascapes, but he often depicted battle scenes, Armenian themes, and
portraiture. Most of Aivazovsky's works are kept in Russian, Ukrainian and
Armenian museums as well as private collections.
At School Doors, Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky
Bogdanov-Belsky was active in St. Petersburg. After 1921, he worked exclusively in Riga, Latvia. He became a member of several prominent societies in including the Peredvizhniki from 1895, and the Arkhip Kuindzhi Society from 1909 (of which he was a founding member and chairman from 1913 to 1918).
Bogdanov-Belsky painted mostly genre paintings, especially of the education of peasant children, portraits, and impressionistic landscapes studies. He became pedagogue and academician in 1903. He was an active Member of the Academy of Arts in 1914. Since 1921, he lived in Riga. Bogdanov-Belsky died in 1945 in Berlin.
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