Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [68]
In “Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Phelps Stokes,” Sargent intended to portray only Mrs. Stokes in a van Dyck pose with a huge dog at her side. Unfortunately, no Doberman was available, so he sketchily substituted her husband, whose vague, shadowy face indicates he was clearly an afterthought. Sargent lavished more care on the crisply drawn female figure, her face radiant with intelligence and charm. The sharp folds of her starched skirt serve to elongate her height and exaggerate her slenderness in Sargent’s clean, linear design. Such elegant paintings in the tradition of Gainsborough and Reynolds made Sargent a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic.
ARCHITECTURE FOR THE INDUSTRIAL AGE
For much of the nineteenth century, revival styles like pseudo-Greek or Roman temples and updated Gothic castles dominated architecture. When the Industrial Revolution made new materials like cast-iron supports available, architects at first disguised them in Neoclassical Corinthian columns. Only in purely utilitarian structures like suspension bridges, railroad sheds, and factories was cast iron used without ornament. Gradually, however, an awareness grew that new materials and engineering methods demanded a new style as practical as the Age of Realism itself.
The Crystal Palace (1850-51), housing the first World’s Fair in London, demonstrated the aesthetic possibilities of a cast-iron framework. Joseph Paxton (1801-65), an engineer who specialized in greenhouses, designed the iron-and-glass structure as a huge conservatory covering 21 acres and enclosing mature trees already on the site. Because machines stamped out cast-iron elements in prefabricated shapes, construction was a snap. In an astonishing six months, workers put the building together like a giant erector set. A barrel-vaulted transept of multiple panes of glass in an iron skeleton ran the length of the building. Interior space, flooded with light, seemed infinite, the structure itself almost weightless.
Paxton, The Crystal Palace, 1850-51, (destroyed by fire,1935), Guildhall Library, London. The Crystal Palace was the first iron-and-glass structure built on such a huge scale that showed industrial materials were both functional and beautiful.
ARTSPEAK
“Realism” is one of the few terms used in art criticism where the style and the actual meaning of the word are one and the same. Many other art terms, however, have specialized meanings that can confuse the beginner. The following is a list of frequently used art terms that can seem like doublespeak.
RELIEF — a projecting design carved or modeled on a flat background.
PERSPECTIVE — a technique for representing space and three-dimensional objects on a flat surface.
FIGURATIVE — style that accurately represents figures, animals, or other recognizable objects (also called representational; its opposite is abstract or nonobjective).
GRAPHIC — art on a flat surface based on drawing and use of line (as opposed to color or relief); especially applied to printmaking.
PLANE — a flat, two-dimensional surface with a defined boundary.
STATIC — arrangement of shapes, lines, colors that reduces visual movement when looking at a picture (opposite of dynamic).
FLAT — without illusion of volume or depth; also pure color lacking gradations of tone.
COMPLEMENTARY — opposite colors on the color wheel (green/red, orange/blue).
VALUES — degree of light or dark in a color.
MONUMENTAL — pertaining to monuments; heroic scale.
Eiffel, Eiffel Tower, 1889, Paris. A triumph of modern engineering, the Eiffel Tower flaunted its iron-and-steel skeleton, devoid of allusions to past architectural