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Vanitas art history
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Vanitas Paintings Vanitas paintings are two dimensional compositions of symbolic content and iconography. The various objects used in the design of these paintings symbolize the brevity of life, the vanity of wealth and beauty, and the inescapable reality of death. This form of art was developed out of Northern Europe in the mid-16th century and through the 17th century. The word “vanitas” is Latin for “vanity.” Vanitas paintings are designed to remind its viewers of the verse in the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes that says all earthly things are “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Artists who painted vanitas wanted their viewers to remember that the wealth, beauty, and achievements that people desire and obtain will pass away and that death is a sure thing. Mortality is the message present in each vanitas painting and each artist expresses this meaning individually with the use of iconography, color, and various techniques. Wheel of Fortune by Audrey Flack and Vanitas by Juan de Valdes are two vanitas paintings that are well known and are similar to each other in that many objects in the paintings illustrate the transience of life. Audrey Flack and Juan de Valdes painted their paintings in different time periods, 1977 and 1660, respectively; yet their works share similar characteristics. …show more content…
The other objects in the paintings are subordinate to the skull. Both paintings use common objects that allude to wealth, beauty, and knowledge, such as jewelry, coins, flowers, and books. The passage of time is portrayed by an hourglass, a clock, and a burning candle. Each object has a unique symbolic meaning that contributes to the overall message the artists wanted to convey. Both of these paintings exhibit asymmetrical balance and not symmetrical balance. The scale and proportion of the objects depicted are
The world is filled with many different types of societies and cultures. This is due to the fact that many people share dissimilar beliefs and ideas, as well as diverse ways of life. People lived under different circumstances and stipulations, therefore forming cultures and societies with ideas they formulated, themselves. These two factors, society and culture, are what motivate people to execute the things that they do. Many times, however, society and culture can cause downgrading effects to an assemblage if ever it is corrupt or prejudiced. Society and culture not only influences the emotions individuals have toward things like age differences, religion, power, and equality but also the actions they perform as a result.
The Empress Dowager Tzi-his (1835-1908) was a unique ruler unlike any other China had ever seen. She is considered to be one of the most influential people in Chinese history, a rarity in the male dominated Chinese world. The empress dowager exerted great power over the Chinese empire and influenced the political structure in ways it had never been influenced before, making many great reforms that she believed would help the Chinese people.
Julia Child created the most influential cookbook in the history of America. In her book, My Life in France, one message she sends about the nature of goodness is that hard work, persistence, and integrity pays off. Julia displays this before, during, and after the process of creating her cookbook. Before, in her cooking classes, Julia did not back down from any challenge, even when no one believed in her. During, Julia worked harder than she had ever worked. And after, Julia and her co- authors Simone and Louisette, never gave up, even when their cookbook was rejected by their publisher. She was the definition of an underdog, but she prevailed, and came out on top. Without her persistence, she never would have had one of the best selling cookbooks of all time.
“From Lieutenant Nun,” a memoir written by doña Catalina de Erauso, tells an intriguing story of a young Spanish female and her advantageous journey through Spain and the New World. Her family intends for her to become a nun but, that is not the life she seeks for herself. Therefore, she breaks away from the convent in hopes of finding somewhere to make her fortune by passing as a male. Catalina’s story is noteworthy because it gives readers another perspective of exploration focusing on self-discovery during the seventeenth century emphasizing how passing as a male is the only thing that secured her ability to explore. In the memoir, Catalina repeatedly reminisces about clothing and, whether she consciously or unconsciously does so, she allows the reader to see that this is an important aspect of her exploration. Throughout Catalina’s journey, clothing plays an increasingly important role not only in her travels but, also her personal life because it symbolized ones status, role, gender and privileges.
An enlightenment philosopher François-Marie Arouet, commonly known as Voltaire, wrote Candide. Voltaire “was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state (Wikipedia).” He was born November 21st 1694 into an upper-middle class family. Voltaire started showing an interest in writing at a young age. Candide was published in 1579. It was a French Satire. A satire is “the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues (Oxford Dictionary).” Candide mocks the ideas of the philosopher Leibnitz though the character of Pangloss because Leibnitz believed in an optimistic world and Voltaire feels that thinking this way makes one a hypocrite. Candide defines optimism as “a mania for insisting that all is well when things are going badly (Voltaire, p. 48).” Throughout the book, many themes and symbols are present.
Art is a severe Goddess, who in return for her smiles demands many sacrifices. No one did more to please her, and no one was so insufficiently rewarded as Van Gogh. Several times the blows that she dealt him were painful enough to make any reasonable man resign. Only fanaticism and faith in her would permit one to leap the abyss between reality and desire. With cruel, merciless method, art asked from Van Gogh everything. It was a loan that multiplied with time and was never paid back. It haunted him within the recesses of his soul, it flirted with him and raises his hopes, it took away from him everything that was dear, and when it could finally take no more, it decided to take his life.
Imagine pondering into a reconstruction of reality through only the visual sense. Without tasting, smelling, touching, or hearing, it may be hard to find oneself in an alternate universe through a piece of art work, which was the artist’s intended purpose. The eyes serve a much higher purpose than to view an object, the absorptions of electromagnetic waves allows for one to endeavor on a journey and enter a world of no limitation. During the 15th century, specifically the Early Renaissance, Flemish altarpieces swept Europe with their strong attention to details. Works of altarpieces were able to encompass significant details that the audience may typically only pay a cursory glance. The size of altarpieces was its most obvious feat but also its most important. Artists, such as Jan van Eyck, Melchior Broederlam, and Robert Campin, contributed to the vast growth of the Early Renaissance by enhancing visual effects with the use of pious symbols. Jan van Eyck embodied the “rebirth” later labeled as the Renaissance by employing his method of oils at such a level that he was once credited for being the inventor of oil painting. Although van Eyck, Broederlam, and Campin each contributed to the rise of the Early Renaissance, van Eyck’s altarpiece Adoration of the Mystic Lamb epitomized the artworks produced during this time period by vividly incorporating symbols to reconstruct the teachings of Christianity.
Charles Percy Austin used fine detail and a mesh of color in order to bring out the beauty in the girl. The strokes he used are precise and even throughout the painting. Charles Percy Austin settled in the golden state of California. He was an artist that had a fine soft brush stroke throughout his canvases. He has done many paintings such as “Mary Pickford’s wedding on the mission’s grounds (1924), La Buena Ventura 91927), and a padre feeding a parrot in the courtyard (1924).” His works earned him a medal from the Panama-California International Exposition. Charles Percy Austin is best known for his splendid and expensive-looking paintings. I experienced this first hand when I entered the museum because his painting stood out from the rest.
The play entitled “Trifles,” by Susan Glaspell, begins as a murder mystery that turns into a drama as the story unfolds. The story is focused on the investigation of a murder that took place in a farm house. The investigators, who are all men, are in the farm house looking for forensic evidence to help them solve the murder. The wives of two of the investigators are there to retrieve personal items for the wife of the victim. Mrs. Wright, who is the wife of the victim, is in jail as the primary suspect of her husband’s murder. When the story begins, all the characters are in the kitchen engaging in small talk. One of the investigators is criticizing the state of the kitchen by complaining that it is dirty and unorganized. The women, who are also house wives, empathize with Mrs. Wright and defend her kitchen by reminding the investigator that house work on a farm is not easy. Throughout the story, the men consistently make stereotypical statements against the women and Mrs. Wright. This paper will analyze male dominance and the effect it had on the female characters. More specifically it will examine how the female characters were forced to develop an intimate bond and how they formed an unspoken form of communication to combat the patriarchy displayed by the male characters.
There is perhaps no greater joy in life than finding one’s soul mate. Once found, there is possibly no greater torment than being forced to live without them. This is the conflict that Paul faces from the moment he falls in love with Agnes. His devotion to the church and ultimately God are thrown into the cross hairs with the only possible outcome being one of agonizing humiliation. Grazia Deledda’s The Mother presents the classic dilemma of having to choose between what is morally right and being true to one’s own heart. Paul’s inability to choose one over the other consumes his life and everyone in it.
Elizabeth Gaskell's Nineteenth Century novel, Mary Barton, is an example of social realism in its depiction of the inhumanities suffered by the impoverished weavers of Manchester, England.
The Flowers By Alice Walker Written in the 1970's The Flowers is set in the deep south of America and is about Myop, a small 10-year old African American girl who explores the grounds in which she lives. Walker explores how Myop reacts in different situations. She writes from a third person perspective of Myop's exploration. In the first two paragraph Walker clearly emphasises Myop's purity and young innocence.
Simone de Beauvoir, the author of the novel The Second Sex, was a writer and a philosopher as well as a political activist and feminist. She was born in 1908 in Paris, France to an upper-middle class family. Although as a child Beauvoir was extremely religious, mostly due to training from her mother as well as from her education, at the age of fourteen she decided that there was no God, and remained an atheist until she died. While attending her postgraduate school she met Jean Paul Sartre who encouraged her to write a book. In 1949 she wrote her most popular book, The Second Sex. This book would become a powerful guide for modern feminism. Before writing this book de Beauvoir did not believe herself to be a feminist. Originally she believed that “women were largely responsible for much of their own situation”. Eventually her views changed and she began to believe that people were in fact products of their upbringing. Simone de Beauvoir died in Paris in 1986 at the age of 78.
Eva Hoffman’s memoir, Lost in Translation, is a timeline of events from her life in Cracow, Poland – Paradise – to her immigration to Vancouver, Canada – Exile – and into her college and literary life – The New World. Eva breaks up her journey into these three sections and gives her personal observations of her assimilation into a new world. The story is based on memory – Eva Hoffman gives us her first-hand perspective through flashbacks with introspective analysis of her life “lost in translation”. It is her memory that permeates through her writing and furthermore through her experiences. As the reader we are presented many examples of Eva’s memory as they appear through her interactions. All of these interactions evoke memory, ultimately through the quest of finding reality equal to that of her life in Poland. The comparison of Eva’s exile can never live up to her Paradise and therefore her memories of her past can never be replaced but instead only can be supplemented.
Perspective is based on Jesus in this painting due to his outward “radiant glow of divine light” (1) extending to the other people in the painting. The main focus is on Jesus and the rest of the figures are diffused in an outward fashion from Jesus himself. The artist himself expresses an emphasis on individualism by implementing himself within the painting by appearing “twice in the Last Judgement: in the flayed skin which Saint Bartholomew is carrying in his left hand, and the figure… who is looking encouragingly at those rising from their graves” (2). This is an action that only a Renaissance painter would do, which is displaying individuality through a self-portrait because of the possibility of being judged for selfishness. Light and shadowing is prominent within the art which is shown in the painting when the lighter, more brighter colors are focused in the middle and then fade into darker tones while moving outward into the