Assessment Schedule 2011 Art History: Examine an art movement (90230)

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1 NCEA Level 2 Art History (90230) 2011 page 1 of 5 Assessment Schedule 2011 Art History: Examine an art movement (90230) Evidence Statement Question One: Māori Art / Taonga TWO or more contexts are used to describe the impact of gender on themes and materials in Māori art. TWO or more key characteristics of art made by men and women are described Roles were clearly defined in traditional Māori society. In the arts men were responsible for carving and women worked in the fibre arts. Tapu restricted the skills of carving of wood, bone, and stone to create wharenui, tools, weapons, moko and waka to men, while women processed harakeke and other materials, to create the clothes for everyday and ceremonial purposes. Within the wharenui the women would create tukutuku panels for the walls and fine mats for the floors. Two art works are used to explain the difference between art made by men and art made by women. Hotunui te whare whakairo, now in the Auckland Museum, was created in 1875 by the master carver Hotereni Taipari and carvers from the Ngāti Awa tribe, and is an important example of traditional Māori art made by men. The house, constructed and carved from timber, features important tipuna from the Ngāti Awa iwi. The ridgepole was named after Hotunui, a great ancestor of the tribe, and forty pou count the generations that followed from this ancestor. Māori women were responsible for weaving. This could be harakeke woven into sandals or food containers, or it could be more ornate, decorated work like the korowai or cloak with taniko borders and interwoven with feathers. Like the carving work done by men, this was created by specialists for chiefs and others of high rank. One korowai in the Canterbury Museum has kiwi feathers woven into a finely worked harakeke base with borders of geometric pattern from kereru feathers. The relationship between the art works, and the social and historical contexts that influenced male and female Māori artists have been comprehensively explained. Māori society had strict rules and protocols that defined the roles of men and women. Only Men were involved in carving, while women took responsibility for weaving. The Whare whakairo was the most important building on the marae and therefore there was strict protocol to be observed in all aspects of its construction. Only men were allowed to be involved in the felling of timber and the building and carving of the figures of the ancestors the house celebrates. Oral records from Ngāti Awa explain that before women were allowed to enter the wharenui a ceremony was held at dawn for three noble women from the tribe who crossed the threshold thus removing the tapu and allowing all women to enter. Women s work, however, could be highly valued too. The chief s korowai was highly prized as feathers signified high rank. Flax processing was a skilled task and protocol was also involved in the cutting, processing, dyeing and weaving of the flax. Like carving skills, the skills of weaving were handed down through the generations. Today some contemporary Māori artists have deliberately involved both men and women in tasks that were once exclusive to one or other gender.

2 NCEA Level 2 Art History (90230) 2011 page 2 of 5 Question Two: Art in Aotearoa At least TWO reasons why regionalism became an important style in New Zealand painting during the 1930s and 1940s are described. Two key characteristics are described. The 1930s 1960s was a crucial time in the growth of modern New Zealand painting. This era saw the emergence of regionalism, which was the realistic depicting of small towns and rural life across various areas within New Zealand. Regionalism related to New Zealand s agricultural background and the wholesomeness of its rural heritage. The style first emerged in Christchurch at the Canterbury School of Fine Arts. It was a means of celebrating the uniqueness of the New Zealand landscape. Clear regionalist aspects are seen in the work of artists like Doris Lusk and Rita Angus and their focus on regionalism established a strong landscape tradition in New Zealand. Even though regionalism occurred in other countries it was seen as a move towards strengthening a national style of painting that would be identified as being uniquely New Zealand, with clear simplified landforms set against a bright, reflective light. An explanation is given of how two art works reflect the dominance of regionalism in New Zealand painting from the 1930s to the 1960s. The pupils from the Canterbury School of Arts who painted the landscape gave rise to the name regionalism, and the way that the paintings identified the imagery with a particular place. Canterbury regionalism was to do with rural areas, small towns, mountains and unpopulated hinterlands. In Cass, 1936, Rita Angus tries to interpret the characteristics of her country, which is a key feature of regionalism. The fact that she did the final painting in a studio reflects her careful planning of the scene so that it is ordered and emphasises its symbolic imagery. William Sutton s Norwester in the Cemetery, 1950 focuses on a climatic feature that typifies the area dry winds and distinctive clouds. The motifs in the painting represent the artist s familiarity with the area the overgrown graveyard, the chapel, the macrocarpas and long golden grasses are all typical features of Canterbury and create a reflective mood. Even though there are no people in this painting the motifs and the landscape are symbols of past generations that have worked the land and battled against the dry land and Southern Alps. The inclusion of the mountain range in the background also enhances the feeling of isolation and New Zealand s small population. How the two art works reflect the emergence of regionalism in New Zealand art and the social and historical factors that have impacted on the development of regionalism is comprehensively explained. Regionalism was concerned with showing the unique features of a place, and with the emergence of works by Angus and Sutton, it became a nationalist art movement even though it is viewed as an international style. Through these artists work key themes in New Zealand s regionalist style became isolation, celebrating rural life and working hard. Other subjects such as breaking in the land, farming, small-town life or the depiction of rural events were other popular subjects of regionalism. Because of the popularity of these subjects in New Zealand painting, all of the rural views looked similar, but as the market for these art works was urban, this did not matter. The landscapes were popular, as they typified New Zealand life. Artists such as Sutton and Angus were to have considerable impact on painting up to 1970, with artists such as Michael Smither and Robin White working in a similar regionalist tradition Smither producing scenes of the New Plymouth coast with its rock formations, and White depicting landscapes north of Wellington that often showed typical New Zealand dwellings. Her inclusion of small beach houses or baches in the landscape is like the work of Angus and Sutton referencing imagery that typified a time and lifestyle within New Zealand s history.

3 NCEA Level 2 Art History (90230) 2011 page 3 of 5 Question Three: French Art The social and artistic factors that led to the development of individual artistic styles are described. Key characteristics of Post Impressionism are identified. By the mid-1880s, Impressionism had run its course and new directions were being sought. Younger artists all developed theories in isolation and in contradiction to one another. The name Post Impressionism was given to them as they departed from Impressionism to find new ways of painting. What they all wanted to do was go beyond the world of fleeting, external appearances that had been so important to the Impressionists, and give their art greater meaning and create images that had a timeless quality. Key characteristics varied between artists but most took one or two aspects of Impressionism, like colour or brushwork, and exaggerated them in a nonnaturalistic fashion. An explanation is given of how TWO art works relate to Post Impressionism and its contexts. Georges Seurat took the visible brushstrokes and scientific developments in colour of the Impressionists and pushed them further. In Les Poseuse, 1888, Seurat used the Venus Pudica, a Roman copy of an ancient Greek sculpture, as a model for the central figure, being both a studio model and a reference from classical art. Seurat was also interested in ancient art and the tiny fragments of coloured stones that created Roman mosaics and up close looked similar to the dots in his pointillist technique, yet like his paintings, merged together at a distance to create a design. By the time he painted Mont Sainte Victoire in 1887, Paul Cézanne had established a passion for solidity and structure in his art rather than the Impressionists aim of capturing a fleeting moment. His technique consisted of creating a tapestry of vertical, horizontal and diagonal strokes, which gave the forms a tactile quality and created a hatchlike collection of brushstrokes on the surface. He painted the mountain many times, in each version the forms became more flattened and geometrical, evidence of his wish to view nature through the sphere, cylinder and cone. How the art works relate to Post Impressionism is comprehensively explained The eighth and last Impressionism exhibition was held in 1886, but by this time many of the works were not true to the original principles of Impressionism. Initially, the Impressionists abandoned the studio to make their paintings outdoors using natural light, their subject being the modern city and suburbs. This interest was being rejected by new and younger artists and by many of Impressionism s original supporters. Some of the Post Impressionists, such as Seurat, painted areas of the city that were less salubrious and more industrial, which they believed to be a more realistic and contemporary view that was also suggested by artists such as Gauguin and Van Gogh, who saw the city as a place of bleak isolation, which was in sharp contrast to the happy and contented scenes of the Impressionists. Artists such as Seurat and Cézanne sought inspiration from the roots of classical and Renaissance art for their figures. They also wanted to reintroduce more formal painting techniques into their works most believed that the technique in later Impressionist paintings had become too random and lacked coherency. Seurat s early training was strongly academic, in his study of Ingres drawings and then studying the scientific writings of Chevreul, who discovered how colours were altered by the other colours that surrounded them. Seurat created his own form of structured pointillism, which returned order and precision back to the process of painting. Even though Cézanne painted his landscapes such as Mont Sainte Victoire outdoors, he built up the paint surface thickly and slowly so that the visual sensations were recorded to create forms in light that were durable. Probably his rejection of traditional illusionistic space and the tension he created through depicting

4 NCEA Level 2 Art History (90230) 2011 page 4 of 5 three-dimensional objects on a flat surface is what made him most distinctively different from the Impressionists. Despite all of these artists Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin and Van Gogh dying relatively young and before the Impressionists, they paved the way for new expressions in art and provided the springboard for art to disperse from Impressionism into the vast range of movements that came to be called modern art at the turn of the twentieth century.

5 NCEA Level 2 Art History (90230) 2011 page 5 of 5 Question Four: New Zealand Architecture TWO historical and artistic contexts that influenced Gothic revival architecture are identified. TWO key characteristics of this building type are identified Most early settlers in New Zealand in the nineteenth century were from European, mainly English backgrounds. They sought to recreate the architectural environment that they knew at home. Gothic Revival was a very popular style at the time most settlers came to New Zealand. The style was developed through the Anglican church, and many settlers were Anglican as this was the main denomination in England. An explanation is given of how TWO buildings are representative of Gothic Revival. St John s College Chapel, 1847 in Auckland is an example of a Gothic Revival Anglican church. Even though it is built from timber rather than stone, its exposed bracing, pointed arches and clearly differentiated parts was true to gothic principles of design set down by church leaders at this time. The Arts Centre in Christchurch was built as the University for Canterbury from 1877 onwards. It has pointed arches, stained glass windows, randomly sized stone work walls, metal decorative detailing on the roofline and a picturesque composition of its parts. All these features clearly identify it as part of the Gothic Revival style. The relationships tbetween the buildings the historical and artistic contexts is comprehensively explained As St John s College was used to train Anglican ministers it is not surprising that the church was a model of the best design principles of the Anglican church. Bishop Selwyn, the Bishop of New Zealand, was a member of the Ecclesiological Society in England, which had developed rules for Anglican church building based on gothic design. These included the use of timber in colonies where stone would prove too expensive. Working with the architect Frederick Thatcher, St Johns provided a correct model for church builders in the colonies to copy. The buildings for Canterbury College, later the University of Canterbury were also following the fashion for Gothic Revival even though they were not for the church. The precedent for the use of the gothic style was also English. The first universities, which in England were Oxford and Cambridge, were founded in the medieval period, and in consequence many educational buildings followed this lead by building in the Gothic Revival style. Judgement Statement A M E

Post-Impressionism. Dr. Schiller/Art History

Post-Impressionism. Dr. Schiller/Art History Post-Impressionism Dr. Schiller/Art History 1 Post Impressionism: Experimenting With Form and Color By 1886, most critics and the general public accepted Impressionists as serious artists Christy Tran