100 Artists Who Shaped World History

INTRODUCTION

ACROSS COUNTLESS centuries, humans have celebrated the world around them through art. The talent of anonymous cave people, who sought to interpret and preserve their way of life, progressed through the ages as artists flourished in their desire and need to express themselves.

The types of artists included in this book work in all genres: painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, quilting, street art, and more. Many of the artists, as you will learn, experimented with and combined genres to create unique visions. Read about Michelangelo, and you will learn about how he suffered a broken nose that motivated him to represent his idea of ideal beauty. In this book, you’ll discover that Henri Matisse abandoned his law practice to pursue painting—an art he took up while recovering from an appendicitis attack.

The word art comes from a Latin term meaning skill, way, or method. From Phidias, a Greek sculptor of the fifth century BCE, to the street artist Banksy of the twenty-first century, these artists from different periods of time have demonstrated particular skills and methods with which they convey human experiences in physical form.

The artist is a storyteller that uses both truth and fiction to interpret and illustrate feelings and ideas through manipulation of paint, bronze, photographic film, and other materials. In revealing the people behind the works, we learn about the influences that shaped their lives and guided their artistic desires.

Art is organized into styles and movements to help characterize the subject matter and the emphasis that artists placed on concepts such as space, perspective, light, and color. The artists in this book cover numerous movements that revolutionized the art world, transcending conventions imposed by governments, critics, or other boundaries. Although an artist may refrain from labels that statically define them and their work, movements legitimize the artist. They give attention to a body of work and attempt to place it on a qualitative scale in order to analyze the work on many different levels.

One of the movements we encounter in this book is the Classical period, which emphasizes harmony and proportions typical of the principles of ancient Greek art. The sculptures of Praxiteles, who produced the first nude statue of the goddess Aphrodite, exemplifies the Classical period.

We learn about the Impressionist artists, who painted from direct observations of subjects and nature, such as Édouard Manet, who helped challenge the French Academy on how art should be officially judged and considered for acceptance to galleries. The movement known as "The Eight," or the Ashcan School, was famous for their portrayal of everyday American life in realistic fashion. This movement included George Wesley Bellows, who began his artistic career by contributing cartoons to a student newspaper and went on to become the youngest artist elected to the National Academy. We also learn about Surrealism, which emphasizes the unconscious and dream imagery, as seen in the works of Salvador Dalí, who was expelled from his university for refusing to take an art history exam administered by teachers he felt were inferior to him.

With each artist, you will learn about their lives, their work, and the hurdles they overcame in order to present their visions to the world.

1. PHIDIAS

flourished c. 490–430 BCE

♦   The Classical period was characterized by an increased awareness of the role of the individual in determining human destiny. PHIDIAS , a Greek sculptor of the Classical period, was known for his style of perfection in reproducing ideal beauty of the human form.

Born in Attica, Greece, Phidias was fortunate. Pericles, the head of affairs in the Athenian state, commissioned his entire artistic career, beginning with the creation of a bronze group of national heroes for Athens. Pericles later made Phidias superintendent of all public works, which allowed him privileges not usually afforded to artists as they were regarded as merchants. Phidias invented new ways of combining figures on foot and on horseback to increase the impression of movement in sculpture.

Phidias exerted a large influence during the era and was the guiding force behind the development of the Classical style, a term referring to the principles of Greek art that emphasize structure and form.

He is credited with the construction of the entrance to the Acropolis, known as the Propylaea, where Greek council members met to discuss government affairs. He also supervised and is believed to have designed the Parthenon, the temple of Athena and the epitome of Greek ideals. Phidias’s own contribution to the Parthenon was the gold-and-ivory statue of Athena, which was over forty feet in height. The standing figure holds a shield in her left hand and a lance rests along her left side. Her extended right hand holds a figure of Nike, the ancient Greek goddess of victory. The shield, pedestal, helmet, and sandals were decorated with scenes from Greek legends.

The gold on the statue was detachable to ward off vandals. Detailed descriptions of it by ancient authors Pausanias and Pliny have preserved its Classical beauty.

In studying the sculptures intact in the monuments of Greece, it is almost certain that Phidias also completed the famous gold-and-ivory Zeus at Olympia statue after he worked on the Parthenon. The statue depicts the god seated on a dais, holding a scepter in his left hand while a figure of Nike rests in his right hand. Both of these works are recognized as chryselephantine, meaning that a core of wood is overlaid with ivory to represent flesh and gold inlaid with enamel is used for drapery.

The events of Phidias’s last years are disputed. Some accounts hold that Pericles’s enemies accused Phidias of embezzling gold that had been set aside for the completion of the statue of Athena and that he was imprisoned until his death. Others claim that he was acquitted of the embezzlement charges but was condemned for blasphemy after he included his own portrait on Athena’s shield.

2. PRAXITELES

flourished c. 370–330 BCE

♦   At a time when sculptors were simple entrepreneurs operating shops in the marketplace like any other vendor, PRAXITELES emerged as an extraordinary artist.

Praxiteles elevated art above the notion that a sculptor was a businessperson selling from a shop. The son of the sculptor Cephisodotus the Elder, he was considered the leader of the Attic school of art. Concentrating on marble statues, he set the precedence for style and content that others were to follow. Praxiteles was one of the first to become aware of the translucent nature of marble, which enabled him to create more lifelike images.

Renowned for his humanization of Greek art, Praxiteles used in his works the lesser-known deities such as Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Hermes, the messenger to the gods. His disillusionment with community values and concern for life came about as a result of the constant fighting and wars between the Greek city-states. It turned his artistic taste toward the view that humankind’s well-being and happiness in this lifetime are primary and that the good of all humanity is the highest ethical goal. As a result, his portrayals of divinities do not possess the superhuman qualities of earlier Greek works but contain a more realistic quality.

It is possible that one of his original works still exists. Hermes Holding the Infant Dionysus was found during the excavation of the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece, in 1877, where the author Pausanias had described seeing it more than one thousand seven hundred years before. Although the find may just be a good Roman copy, it lends insight to Praxiteles and the manner in which he expressed himself.

His signature pieces all contained a languid S curve and so came about the term Praxitelean curve. His most celebrated work, the marble statue of Aphrodite, which survives as a Roman copy in the Vatican Museum in Italy, was the first nude statue of the goddess and one of the earliest Greek statues of a female nude, which demonstrates the change in the status of women and Praxiteles’s role as an artist to convey that change openly in a tangible form. He is especially celebrated for his satyr, of which the best known is Resting Satyr. A Roman copy of this work exists in the Capitol Museum in Rome, Italy. A god of the woods with the head and body of a man and the legs, ears, and horns of a goat, it was immortalized in words by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne in the book The Marble Faun in 1860.

3. CIMABUE

c. 1251–1302

♦   The art of painting had fallen out of popularity in Italy during the thirteenth century. CIMABUE , a Florence-born painter, resurrected art by painting living models, which was an innovative method at the time. Documents show that his real name was Bencivieni di Pepo , or, in modern Italian, Benvenuto di Giuseppe . During his lifetime, it was common to adopt nicknames and use them. Cima has two meanings: the noun meaning summit or head and the verb meaning to shear or to cut. With the suffix -bue, meaning ox, his name translates to oxhead, or a bold and ironic man. The name suits him, as pointed out by Dante , author of the book The Divine Comedy . Dante wrote:

Cimabue, a painter of our time, is a man so arrogant and proud withal, that if any discovered a fault in his work, or if he perceived one in himself, as will often happen to the artist who fails from the defects in material that he uses, or from insufficiency of the instrument with which he works, he would instantly abandon that work, however costly it might be.

Cimabue was an influential painter who broke away from the formalism of Byzantine art, characterized by rigid and fictitious representations of nature. He introduced a lifelike treatment of traditional religious subjects by replacing conventional design with a more vital manner of painting based on his observations of real things. His signature mark is a partly angular, partly curved structure that conveys movement and energy, which was the precursor of dimension in art. Some speculate that Cimabue earned the title of wall painter for his expansion of the style of monumental-scale painting of his older contemporary, Coppo di Marcovaldo. One of his most noted works is the Santa Trinita Maestà (c. 1290), a painting of Madonna and child on a wood panel which stood at over twelve feet high. It was certainly a feat for his time when most art focused on small canvas paintings.

Art historians generally place Cimabue at the beginning of modern art and as the probable teacher of Giotto, a Florentine painter who achieved a representation of space without using a system of perspective that had been common in the Byzantine formula of art. Cimabue is known to have visited Rome in 1272, and he was perhaps influenced by the Classical current in art that was prevalent there at the time. Cimabue is recorded in historical documents for the commission of the painting Crucifix (c. 1260) for the hospital church of St. Chiara, Pisa, Italy, and as a master workman on the mosaic of St. John (c. 1301) at the Pisa Cathedral in Italy. Over time, many frescoes have since been attributed to him, but modern scholars accept only a few as authentic. The majority of his works are located in the Church of St. Francesco in Assisi, Italy.

4. GUAN DAOSHENG

1262–1319

♦   GUAN DAOSHENG is known by many as the most talented woman painter and calligrapher in Chinese history . Her name, which means way of righteousness rising as the sun, is a nod to her strong presence and sense of self as an artist while living under the restrictive rules of Imperial China .

Guan was born in 1262 in Wuxing, which is in the Zhejiang province in central China. Born into an elite land-owning family, Guan was seen as a very bright child from an early age, and her father hoped her captivating spirit would attract a successful husband. It wasn’t until she was twenty-seven that she married artist Zhao Mengfu, who was from a prominent imperial family.

In 1260, Emperor Kublai Khan founded the unified Yuan Dynasty, after his grandfather—Genghis Khan—had initiated the reunification of China decades earlier in 1211. This founding symbolized the end of the Mongol conquest, and soon after Kublai Khan took power, he requested the brightest intellectuals be brought to him to fill powerful government positions. Zhao was requested to join the ranks, but he rejected the offer at first because many hated the conquerors. He eventually agreed, taking on a position in the war ministry that he would hold for the rest of his life.

Due to this position, Zhao and Guan became known in society over the years, and they were often invited to the imperial court. Although Guan and her husband became notable artists, Guan’s talent often surpassed that of her husband’s. She soon became a famed calligrapher and created a collection, titled The Thousand Character Classic, which immensely impressed the emperor, who commented that the volume would transcend generations.

Guan also became known as a prolific painter, and she often depicted natural elements that she missed from her home, such as rich greenery and rice fields, because she and her husband had to move due to his position with the state. She produced several highly regarded paintings of natural subjects like birds, flowers, and landscapes, but the most notable mark is her exploration of bamboo. In Chinese culture, bamboo is a masculine symbol, illustrating the values of the perfect gentleman who can bend but not break and exhibit strength in all areas. Guan’s success and confidence in creating a body of bamboo works—and the warm reception they received from society—illustrates her powerful artistic and social intelligence.

Guan became known as a masterful bamboo artist throughout China. On May 29, 1319, she passed away while battling an illness. Several of her pieces are still considered as extraordinary examples of technical mastery and artistic and sociological history centuries later, most notably The Bamboo in Monochrome and Bamboo Groves in Mist and Rain. Her approach in featuring bamboo in unique and fresh ways has brought art historians to the conclusion that she was attempting to integrate feminine layers into Chinese art.

5. DONATELLO

c. 1386–1466

♦   Renowned for creating sculptures that exemplified the qualities of the Renaissance period—experimentation, invention, and creativity— Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi , known as DONATELLO , was recognized in his early twenties as a prolific artist. He is regarded as the founder of modern sculpture due to his innovation in optical