This is entirely of Compare and Contrast Questions.  You will Choose 2 sets from the list below -- 1 each from Group A and Group B and write a full compare and contrast essay (2-3 pages) on each pair that you choose.  Relate each to its specific movement or stylistic category, as well as to the ideas of Early Modernism.  Consider media, technique, context, use, other aspects of significance.  Consider not only the specific object but also related works by the same artist as veins of discussion, citing any others you introduce and stating their relationship in specific terms.

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1 LC Tiffany.Spring stained glass panel. 1892. Hector Guimard, SilkfPanel,  Guimard House, c. 1900. Both art nouveau - organic curvilinear style, often, as here, characterized by fluid line, often in modern materials, as with Tiffany.  Both artists were leaders in modern decorating taste, and used the style in masterful ways that made each of them well-known for their work and their innovations in form and material.  Tiffany was an American interior designer and decorator, as well as designer of many types of objects manufactured by his family's jewelry and luxury housewares firm. Guimard is best-known as designer of the art nouveau Paris Metro station entrances, but also created furniture and many other design forms, including this silk panel -- an unusual textile application for the style and other embellishments for the home.  Art nouveau  is based in nature, often using plant and insect forms, but in a highly stylized manner with interwoven elements.    Guimard and others used the new style for typography and graphics applications as well, architecture that demonstrates art nouveau style and many types of  furniture.  Tiffany was also well-known as one the premier designers of glass objects in this style and  used the medium for a wide variety of decorative works such the stained glass panels, --many, as here, in lavish stylized floral and nature-based designs in various sizes and for the leaded glass lampshades that were used with metal lamps in art nouveau  forms, emphasizing the potential of light itself as a medium, with the newly popular electric light bulbs as part of the scheme.  The point of the comparison is the application of  art nouveau  as a modernized approach which rejected the restrictions of slavish naturalism, of traditional styles and revivalism, and generally embraced the possibilities of new, industrial materials, used in craftsman-like fashion.

2. Antoni Gaudi, Casa Mila. Barcelona Spain, c. 1900. Victor Horta. Tassel (Tassili) House, Brussels, Belgium, 1892-93. Each is an example of architecture for residential purposes that demonstrates the use of the art nouveau style, but with somewhat different interpretations.  Gaudi's approach is somewhat more fluid and organic, with curvilinear surfaces throughout -- a seeming avoidance of straight lines and right angles, with a sensuous and sculptural approach that makes use of modern materials like reinforced concrete, not only here in this apartment block and other similar residential buildings, but also in the Sagrada Familia church and the playful Guell Park.  On the other hand, Horta's buildings, like this and others, were generally somewhat more restrained and rather formal by comparison, -- perhaps closer to natural forms -- although the strong fluidity of the style is apparent in numerous touches, inside and out, as for the organic staircases and doorways, with leafy tendrils, some in the modern cast iron material, others in wood, ceramic, stone, or glass.  Both were inspired by the curvilinear approach  to emphasize sensuous line and fluid transitions between spaces, and between exteriors and interiors.   

3. C.R.Mackintosh. The Willow Tearoom, Glasgow, Scotland. 1904.  J.A.M. Whistler.  The Peacock Room. Leyland House, London. 1876-77.  These two designers combine the ideas of  the Aestheticism movement and the emerging art nouveau style for decorating projects, Mackintosh's work has a greater linear simplicity. and a stronger sense of abstraction and stylization.  His design for architecture and architectural decoration, rooted in the English Arts and Crafts movement, has been widely influential, and encompasses many media, including furniture and fabric design, all with a strong sense of surface emphasis. This was one of several tearooms that he designed and decorated, along with his wife,and there were many other architecture and decoration projects by him, as well. The American expatriate Whistler, on the other hand, was more usually engaged in painting, drawing and printmaking, but undertook this commission for John Leyland for a room in which his Asian porcelain collection would be displayed.  Using that as a springboard, Whistler used the popular Japonisme elements in a a more fully art nouveau style (although with overtones of the Aestheticism movement, as well) to create an appropriate setting.  He modelled his wall panels after Japanese screens, heavily embellished with gilding, and including floating cloud and foliage motifs and a kimono-clad princess (for which his lover was the model) as the dominant pictorial feature. Overall, these are different interpretations and different mixes of the two movements -- Aestheticism, with its focus on the beautiful and the visual pleasure it might bring, and art nouveau, with its curvilinear and organic emphasis.

4. Gustave Eiffel, Truyere Bridge, Garabit, France. 1880-89.  J. A. Roebling and Washington Roebling.  Brooklyn Bridge, NYC. 1867=>.  Each work is an example of modern bridge building, but with considerably different approaches to expressing modern ideas and using up-to-date materials.  The cast-iron construction methods favored by Eiffel  for his railroad bridge were based in the use of modular construction where components of cast-iron could be pre-fabricated elsewhere and then could be easily and quickly assembled on-site.  The design is largely based on accommodation of the stresses that wind would put on the bridge, and Eiffel sought to create a structure that would withstand such forces of nature.  Roebling, Sr. designed the Brooklyn Bridge for pedestrian and vehicle traffic with a view not only to Modernism, but also to the then-popular revivalism of traditional architectural styles, such as Gothic, here used for the arches and decorative features of the stone towers from which the newly-designed twisted steel wire suspension cables were hung to support the roadbed.  When Roebling Sr. died before the completion of the project, his son took over.  Each is an example of revised building modes that use both modern materials and modern design ideas.

5. John Curran, for Tiffany. Magnolia Vase 1893. Henry van de Velde. Silver Candelabra, 1898.  Each of these lavish decorative works is associated with the art nouveau  style, and each is wrought of elegant material, although there is considerable difference in the complexity and the materials used.  The use of jewelry materials and a sense of the luxurious was frequently seen for each artist/company, as they worked for wealthy clients, supplying various services in decorating and designing goods for both public and private commissions, in an age when the demand for such goods and services was frequently seen among the middle and upper classes.  The American Tiffany firm created household and jewelry-type artworks, and Curran was one of their chief designers, while the Belgian van den Velde designed somewhat more widely -- in graphics, typography, furniture, and even architecture.  The Magnolia vase in a lush and complex form of an elaborate floral bouquet, is encrusted with such jewelry materials as silver, gold, enamels, and opals, while the candelabra, by contrast is remarkable for its elegantly simple and sinuous curvilinear organic lines in silver.

6. Cass Gilbert. The Woolworth Bldg., NYC 1911-13.  Louis Sullivan.  Guaranty Trust Bldg. Buffalo, NY. 1894-95. Each of these buildings exemplifies modern American architecture and the advent of the skyscraper, but in somewhat different phases of the evolution of a new type.  The potential for application of modern materials and structural methods evolved over time.  When Sullivan designed the Guaranty Trust Building, he emphasized the stages of the tripartite elevation with distinctive treatment for each level, and various lavish surface decorations, including the more-solid base, the emphatic pilasters on the second segment, which lead the eye up the vertical surfaces to the dramatic oculi in the crowning cornice.  Compared to the Guaranty Trust's  overall blockiness of form, the Woolworth Building is staged, with stepped-in blocks at several points as it rises to a 52 story-height -- more than triple that of Sullivan's structure. And while it does not have the same degree of overall-surface decoration, there is considerable Gothic Revival sculptural embellishment in the form of Gothic-inspired corbel tables, ogival window casements, and other such touches.  These are each exemplary of the evolution of the skyscraper form that trumps traditional building ideas, while borrowing traditional decorative approaches (Gothic in one, more modern art nouveau in the other) touches and providing the setting  for the new "Cathedral of Business."  Each building uses a steel frame, with stone revetment, and this new material facilitated the increasing interest in height.

7. Georges Seurat. Le Pont de Courbevoie. 1886-87. Paul Signac.  Green Sail in Venice. 1909.  Both oil on canvas paintings,  examples of the divisionism for which these two French artists are best known.  Each is also associated with the ideas of Neo-Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, seeking greater structure, precision, scientific basis, and social implications for their art, than had the Impressionist artists, whose work they considered too shallow and superficial.  Still, they built upon some of their ideas about visual perception, color theory and application of  paint in smaller units.  Seurat and Signac each also sought more solid pictorial structure and sense of systematic recession into space, often using landscapes as vehicles for exploration of spatial ideas.  While Seurat is better known, and seems to have led the experimentation, it was Signac who created the theory and formulation, and who named the movement  He was from an aristocratic family and loved sailing, so this waterscape work reflects those aspects of his life and his quest for depicting concentrated light/color ideas, which influenced the Fauves.

8. Maurice Denis. Figures in a Spring Landscape (Sacred Grove) 1897. Georges Seurat.  Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. 1884-86. Both oil on canvas by French artists, in different styles.  Denis, who was associated with the Nabis and the Pont-Aven school is most strongly linked to Symbolism.  His approach has overtones of mysticism, rendered in lyrically-drawn tableauz, often in mural format, for which he was popular.  His use of oils and colors resulted in glowing, luminous effects that enhance their sense of the spiritual and allegorical meaning that associates them with Symbolism.  Seurat, on the other hand, also placed his figures in the landscape, but did so quite differently.  The figures by each are very precise and individualized, but Seurat's are more numerous, and set in deeper space. Rather than an intriguing spiritual effect, his message shows concern with the leisure activities of the middle class, characterized by crowded conditions, and a sense of anonymity and formalism rather than enjoyment, which is reactionary to the often light-hearted social themes of the Impressionists.  His paint application, unlike Denis' simplified and slightly modeled work, with its great amount of linear drawing. is applied in the divisionist technique, with small distinctive dots of color that, according to the theory, would be mixed in the eye, rather than on the artist's palette, depending upon the viewing distance, and is also a revision of Impressionist ideas/techniques.  For each of these artists, the painting shown is considered a masterwork, and each is modernist in its move away from the traditional modes of depiction and painting, and also shows concern with a particular type of contemporary subject matter -- one the spiritual, the other social.

9 Pierre Bonnard, Woman with a Dog, 1891; Paul Gauguin, La Belle Angele 1889.  While both of these artists were associated with the group who called themselves Nabis (prophets) and with the Pont-Aven school, their goals and interests diverged in several ways.  Each took certain elements of Japonisme a popular  borrowing from Japanese prints that intrigued western artists who sought to affirm the picture plane and avoid illusionism of traditional approaches to rendering depth.  In addition to the pushing of pictorial information to the surface of the painting, they used ideas about pattern and decoration.  Bonnard's imagery is flattened more, perhaps, and his subjects seem pressed and tilted, with the use of bold patterns in garments enhancing both the sense of flatness and of a decorative effect, rendered from mixed viewpoints -- a device he frequently employed.  He created a great many decorative works, many of them multi-panel screens where he played further with the sense of space and surface. In these works at hand, where Bonnard places the pattern on the foremost part of the picture, Gauguin, on the other hand, uses pattern as a motif in the background, where he softens and blurs it, embedding it into the wall plane.  While that treatment tends to lend a sense of recession  into space, he denies it with setting off the woman's figure in an inscribed sort of cloison.and presenting her in an iconic sort of clipeus/roundel.  Additionally, typically for him, he uses such touches as the idol-like figure on the shelf to the left, and a regional costume, with its distinctively shaped headdress, as a design element within his composition, whereas Bonnard's main figure, in the patterned dress, is wearing contemporary garb. Gauguin was more interested in the people and mores that were not a part of the mainstream society of the day, whereas Bonnard often used the inspiration of fashionable contemporary clothing. Their paint handling is markedly different, as well.  Both are rather loosely painted and brushy, but Bonnard's color, while not unmodeled, is less so, perhaps, than that of Gauguin, who here, as usual, creates richly varied areas of bright color through deft scumbling-and-glazing, as opposed to the somewhat flatter patches of color of Bonnard.  Each of them has created a carefully constructed composition here.  While they worked from similar concerns with color, space, depth, and composition, and each was associated with the notion of Symbolist Modernism in art with spiritual implications about modern life, the personal approaches and effects differ markedly.   

10. Vincent van Gogh.  Thatched Houses in Cordeville 1890. Paul Gauguin  Day of the Gods.  1894. These two Post-Impressionists had many things in common: their interest in Symbolism, their association with the Pont-Aven school, with the Nabis, and their interests in Modernism in painting, as they sought strong and meaningful new purpose for their art.  But their different approaches to the use of color and paint are evident in these two distinct landscape studies, each of which has symbolic implications beyond simple rendition of the physical, phenomenal world they saw.  Van Gogh was apt to use thick linear application of paint, sometimes straight from the tube in heavy, linear marks that were very expressive and aggressive.  Building upon his heritage from the Dutch landscapists he admired, he had added the sense of emotional response which, although somewhat more placid here than in some of his paintings, still conveys the sense of having been deeply-felt, as he described the landscape here as "profoundly beautiful" and he admired the charming that roofs in this vicinity.  His strong structure is conveyed partially by his cloisonnistic outlining -- an approach he shared with Gauguin, although they accomplished it somewhat differently, in that van Gogh's overall work is more linear, often lending an organic quality to such elements as the houses which might have been more geometric and static,  while Gauguin's lines are somewhat more like punctuation within the composition. although some of his works are more strongly linear and cellular than this one. Gauguin's painting is often, as here, glowing and luminescent, almost ethereal in effect, partially in response to the tropical Tahitian setting in this one, but he showed the same interest in light and color effects when he worked in the south of France, often producing, by means of transparent glazing layers, remarkably rich, jewel-like effects.  His subject matter here is, additionally, the Tahitian idols that dotted the landscape, and which he contrasted with his Christian European background in profound spiritual questioning

11. Paul Serusier. La Barrière Fleurie. 1889. Paul Cézanne. Card Players.  1890.  Examination of these two works in oil on canvas  points up some of the chief contributions that the artist Cézanne contributed to Modernism is terms of pictorial structure, treatment of space, use of color and of paint application,  to explore the issues of 2-dimensionality versus 3-dimensionality in painting, and how his exploration differed from that of the other modernists. Serusier, a leader among the Nabis at Pont-Aven, was a theorist, who sought to achieve, through careful compositional structure, an architectonic sense of depth with regard to the placement of  the figures and the sluice gate at which they stand, the hill, the row of trees and the building beyond -- carefully creating the illusion of recession, but with a rather loosened, flattened, and abstracted use of form and simplified shapes and unmodeled, rather patchy color.  By contrast, Cézanne seeks to emphasize the picture plane itself, its flatness, and the necessarily 2-dimensional character of the work of art.  He avoids illusionism in recession, and his structural approach has more to do with the composition as laid out across the picture plane, than with a sense of recession.  Yet, his figures and their surroundings are not devoid of a sense of form and space, but his treatment is more concerned with the use of color and its potential for implying relative placement according to its warmth or coolness and, along with his "constructive" brushwork, used to build the picture rather than modelled to imply volumes in form.  He also avoids tonalities that would seem to create a sense of space.  It is Cézanne's explorations that make possible the full blossoming of Modernism in its strongest statements against artistic tradition and upon which Cubism and other experiments will be built.

12. Georges Seurat.  Le Chahut.  1891.study for this shown in PPT, but enlarging thumbnail shows greater detail here Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Troupe de Mlle. says Mme. in PPT  Eglantine.  1896.  These two works, although rather different in effect and different in medium and purpose, have a considerable amount in common.  Seurat's painting, for which the design was based on a poster by Jules Cheret, and Toulouse-Lautrec's, which is a poster itself, both reflect the sort of night-life scenes that so often intrigued the Post-Impressionists, and which were taken up partly in reaction to the often more genteel middle-class pastimes that the Impressionists had depicted.  Toulouse-Lautrec, in particular, had been intrigued with the seamier side of Parisian club life and the lower class of  people associated with them -- dance-hall girls, prostitutes, bar-maids, etc. Each artist here chose to use the repetitious rhythms of a line of high-kicking dancers (perhaps performing the same dance) as a strong diagonal compositional device, although their compositions differ considerably in format and effect.  And while their color schemes are related, their color concerns are quite different.  Seurat uses color tonalities associated with the gaslight atmosphere of these clubs and the application of paint dots relates to the divisionism that was his main experiment, where color was laid in in distinct dots that would be mixed in the viewer's eye rather than on the painter's palette, in one of his major revisions of Impressionist ideas.  Toulouse-Lautrec was a master of the graphic media, including type faces, designing many such posters to attract clientele to the clubs with their promise of racy entertainment by well-known personalities.  he created simplified linear studies that had great graphic impact.  His study of other modernists and his overturning of Impressionist subject matter, as well as the Japonisme which influenced him and Seurat and so many others, led him to create lively, distinctive, and innovative posters that were quite popular.

13. Paul Gauguin. Spirit of the Dead, Watching  1892. Pierre Bonnard. Nude Against the Light 1908.  These represent two very different approaches to depiction of the nude female form, a subject with long tradition in painting.  Each is quite Modern in their approach, spurning the traditional sort of depiction, but in different ways.  Gauguin's female is a notably young Tahitian girl, who appears fearful, but nonetheless rather richly seductive and prey to the voyeurism of the viewer and the artist and to the shrouded figure who seems to threaten her. The treatment is greatly enriched by the vibrant skin tones, as well as the touches of tropical color which appear among the bedclothes and in the lushly modelled backdrop of blues, purples and pinks that surround the sinister death figure leaning against a sort of totem pole at the left rear.  The sense of hush and rather subdued light still allows the lively coloration so typical of Gauguin to appear rich and lush despite the deeper tones than he often uses to show his concern for light and color.  Bonnard also responds strongly to light in his nude study, but much more directly and with greater response to the variation of light and color as affected by the sun streaming in the window and the shadowed areas it creates within the room, and especially upon the nude form and its reflection in the mirror, which is not logically aligned with the figure in the room, and so becomes somewhat disconcerting. By contrast to Gauguin's exotic tropical setting, Bonnard, typically, chose a domestic interior, although perhaps in a southern locale, to judge from the brilliant sunlight, and he also, typically for him, took a much more decorative approach to color.  While Gauguin is one of the chief artists of Post-Impressionism, Bonnard is one of the many French artists who follow in the wake of that movement, expanding upon the experiment -- not making a radical innovation, but adding some new ideas, like the expanded use of decorative pattern and some additional play with color and light.

14. Henri Rousseau. Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest 1905,  Vincent van Gogh. Irises 1889. Each of these artists is associated with Symbolism as well as with the Nabis and other movements,  and here each has taken up a nature-related theme, but there are strong distinctions in their ideas and modes of working.  Van Gogh is one the the primary artists among the Post-Impressionists, seeking to give art more meaning and purpose than they thought could be credited to the Impressionists, while Rousseau, primarily self-taught, is often classified as a naïve or primitive painter, although what he taught himself goes considerably beyond any sense of an experimental amateur.  Through close study of museum masterworks, he arrived at a strong sense of his own singular vision and an idea of his obligation about creating expressions in paint that would convey that vision to the world.  In this work, as he frequently did, he rendered plants in outsized proportion with a strong sense of fantasy at play.  The figure placed within the lush garden setting is diminutive by contrast, so that she is apparently overwhelmed by the huge fruit and foliage and flowers around her, although she does not appear frightened or threatened, as do the figures in some of Rousseau's related works. Overall, there is a sense of fantastic narrative, simplification and exaggeration of form, and Rousseau's singular sort of imagination.  Van Gogh's work here is clearly based in the Japonisme-influenced type, of which he created a considerable number of paintings, imitating certain traits he admired in the Japanese prints and paintings he studied, especially the sense of carefully-patterned placement of the flowers and foliage within the composition, the observation of beauty, of clarity and design detail, and the reduction of compositional elements for emphasis.  To these he added cloisonism,. and heavy, expressive paint, laden with emotional implications.  So, while each work has something of a nature theme with flowers and foliage, the messages presented differ considerably (one an apparent narrative, the other an emotion-laden flower study), as do the styles and compositional treatments.

15. Alphonse Mucha Sarah Bernhardt as Gismonda. 1894; Gustave Klimt. Emilie Floege. 1902.   The Czech Mucha and the Austrian Klimt both enjoyed considerable commercial success and  mastered their own versions of the art nouveau style and each was sought after for particular types of commissions, although the types differed considerably.  Mucha could more be truly be considered a commercial, graphic artist and was adept at designing posters, advertising, and packaging for wide variety of goods.  This was one of many posters he created for the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt, in a lyrical and elegant portrayal that is quite stylized rather than portrait-like, emphasizing perhaps the importance of the role of Gismonda that she was taking on.  Klimt's work is equally stylized, although considerably more portrait-like, at least in the facial area, with a much stronger sense of physical presence and persona of the woman herself.  Both use lavish patterning, but again, in very different ways.  Mucha's seems much more graphic and linear, while Klimt's is lusher and more elegant and sumptuous.  The work of Mucha is more clearly influenced by the English Arts and Crafts sense of decoration, while Klimt shows his singular Byzantine mosaic or jewel-like surface patterns in several varied areas of the composition.  Each of the ladies is long and lean and elegant, but remarkably different in effect.

Extra Credit ( up to 20%):  Select another pair from above and write another essay, following the same directions. Identify fully and write a full discussion.