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 In the second half of the 20th century, artists became more conscientious of the environment and natural world, whether to raise concerns on its deterioration, or to get a better, closer understanding of it. For Andy Goldsworthy, it was the latter. His site-specific works of environmental art are known for their fleeting natural beauty--such as one installed on a beach made of sand, only to be swept away by waves, or one created somewhere so remote as the North Pole to be weathered by gale force winds. Utilization of material at site-specific locations and creating sculpture is known as Land Art, one of many kinds of installation art that involves an environmental approach and redefining artistic conventions. Taking the environmental approach to the most extreme, in 1989 created four huge snow rings at the North Pole. Titled Touching North , the rings indicate magnetic north, though the rings do not indicate direction, as the direction will always be south. Though the temperatures are

 "Modernism took shape decades before World War I, but its clamorous arrival was vastly accelerated by the greatest collective trauma in history to that point." (Johnson, 2012). In the Western and industrialized world, it is evident the effect of the first World War had farther reaching consequences in both time and space. Though modernism began more than half a century prior, its definable characteristics such as the absent single point perspective or bizarre compositions wouldn't take their place in the progression of visual arts until after the Great War. Surrealism wouldn't be fully realized until life had become so visually bizarre and emotionally confounding artists, who were often made to fight for country against their will, had to put pen to paper or paint visually fragmented pieces to reflect personal experience. These experiences are delivered in bourgeoning movements post WW1 in Dadaism, an international movement that repudiated everyday conventions and in

 As someone who has read a considerable amount of romanticism literature--likely stemming from first reading Pride and Prejudice in high school which gave way to British literature classes and world literature courses set in the 19th-20th centuries--I naturally took to seeing the visual arts aspect of the Romantic period. I've always appreciated an author's ability to make or find something extraordinary in rather ordinary things for the effect of evoking unsettling mental imagery and emotional stimulation. And when I read William Blake was also a painter, I was interested and obligated. The Ghost of a Flea (1819-1820), according to the website and British art gallery Tate, was something of a hallucination for Blake, that told him "fleas were inhabited by the souls of bloodthirsty men," (Tate, 2021). According to Jonathan Jones in a Guardian article, Blake's Flea was a "riposte" to the dominating form of art at the turn of the 19th century in Europe: Po

Morality and Art of the Classical era became complementary, or synonymous, with one-another proceeding and marking the end of the Rococo style arts during 1780's France. This shift in the visual arts from what was ultimately interpreted as a 'moral decline', along with the discovery of Herculaneum ruins and Pompeii--upon which new ideas and new works of art might be borne--spurred the classical era and its loftier ideals. Morality in the late 18th century experienced several major overhauls, evening worsening by the end of the century, as socioeconomic factors became increasingly more apparent between the nobility of France and the Clergy, and the burgeoning bourgeoise. The transition in what members of society perceived as moral and amoral is exemplified in the art they commissioned, as well as the factions and movements in which they participated and supported. It became painfully apparent to the middle class French the injustices and inequities they suffered and the aris

  The Taking of Christ, 1602, Oil on Canvas Though he was apprenticed to Simone Peterzano, a Venetian of the later Mannerist period, Michelangelo 'Caravaggio' Marisi's career first took hold in the early 1590's under the patronage of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte. It was in this manner Caravaggio was taken under the wing of the Roman Catholic Church, and amidst a transformational period in religious practice when the Church was still working to revitalize the piety of the individual and to influence the arts away from the unusual scale and color that was the Mannerist period.  This transitional period in Italian art--from the Mannerist to the Baroque--coincided with what is known as the Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church, which took roots in a set of council meetings some 30-40 years prior in Trent, northern Italy, known as the Council of Trent. The objective of the Council was a return to the indisputable power of the Church, clarification of its doctrines

  Jacopo da Pontormo's Madonna with Child and Saints, oil on painting, 1518     The piece I selected comes from the High Renaissance, or Late Renaissance, which began roughly around 1520 until about 1580. This peak period has been dubbed the Mannerist period. I immediately became interest in this particular style of Renaissance art due to the literal definition of mannerism: a habitual or characteristic manner, mode or way of doing something; a way of speaking or behaving; an idiosyncrasy . The fascination I find in people from all walks in life is they are uniquely themselves--they have their own idiosyncrasies, their own peculiarities that naturally bring to light their individuality and being. So when we learned about the outgrowth of Mannerist artists from the Italian Renaissance, I was taken by this particular group that studied and contributed to a pivotal movement in the visual arts, and also made it their own. While the humanist philosophy jump started this movement in the