ART200X: Gerald Montuya

 Harlem Renaissance The New York City neighborhood of Harlem fostered African American achievements in the humanities such as art, music, and literature. Many African Americans were fleeing the South and sought New York City as an asylum. The exodus was brought to the community of Harlem. Due to a surplus in housing available in the community, many families took the opportunity to find a home in Harlem ("National Gallery of Art"). The exodus from the South to Harlem lead to the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance.     Aaron Douglas, Harriet Tubman Mural Bennet College Art Gallery, 1931 Oil on canvas   Aaron Douglas was born in Topeka, Kansas on May 26, 1899. He used the early modern art form of cubism, geometry, and abstractions. Douglas was a member of the Harlem Artists Guild (Crée). He was famous for his murals and particularly those depicting the Jazz Age. In this piece, Douglas wrote Harriet Tubman “as a heroic leader breaking the shackles of bonda...

 Romantic Era Styles My favorite art style of the Romantic era are of the Realist variety. Art Noveau, in my opinion, lacks the emotional intensity I crave in paintings. This is an aspect of art that the Realist style provides at the forefront. Realist   Illia Repin, Barge Haulers on the Volga   State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg   Oil on canvas    Illia (or Ilya) Repin presents Barge Haulers on the Volga . Illia paints a desolate scene in which people are fastened to a barge to pull it into the bay. The landscape format of the painting creates the sense of a large landscape as the observer's eyes move from left to right scanning the piece. The lines emphasized by the ropes takes the observer to each barge hauler and the shared grimaces they hold. It is clear by the tans Illia paints on each of the haulers that some are newer to the routine while others are bent over in anguish as if they are in an endless cycle of barge hauling. The piece is incredibly s...

Morality in Art Morality is the distinction between what is right and wrong, just and unjust. Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher of the Classical era, states that those who are capable of reason are sovereigns in the moral domain. According to Kant, women were not included as those who are capable of reason. Kant remarks that "[a] woman who has a head full of Greek, like Mme Dacier, or carries on fundamental controversies about mechanics, like the Marquise de Châtelet, might as well have a beard" (Mosser, Kurt.). To Kant, a scholarly and accomplished woman might as well be a man. The female artists of the Classical era were subdued by the European patriarchy that was amplified by Enlightenment thinkers like Kant. Female artists struggled and underwent greater magnitudes of difficulty to achieve recognition. In this gallery, I present three different artists who, despite the patriarchy, established themselves as artisans in their own right and paved the way for the women afte...