Becoming Strangers:

Travel, Trust, and the Everyday.

Day Two.

Michelangelo Buonarroti,

David (1501-04).

What is “art”?

Source: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics (1820s)

(1) Art is not religion.(2) Art is not decoration.(3) Art is an occasion for the human spirit to

contemplate itself.

“Venus” of Willendorf (ca. 23,000 BCE)

Minoan “Snake Goddess” (ca.16,000 BCE)

Greek Sculpture, Classical Period (5th Century BCE)

Greek Sculpture of the Hellenistic Period (323 BCE – 30 CE)

Laocoon (ca. 200 BCE)

Nike of Samothrace (ca. 200 BCE)

THE RENAISSANCE

Donatello, Judith and Holofernes (ca. 1460).

Patron: Cosimo de’ Medici,

ruler of the city of Florence in Northern Italy.

Statue based on the apocryphal Book of Judith.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

At 13 apprenticed to an artist in Florence and learns to draw.

Taken up by Lorenzo de’ Medici (Cosimo’s brother). Learns to sculpt by studying ancient Roman statues in Lorenzo’s collection.

In 1494 the Medici are driven from power. Michelangelo jobless.

He goes to Rome and sculpts his first freestanding statue, Bacchus (1496-97). Makes him a superstar.

Michelangelo, David (1501-04)

Naked Guy or Warrior Widow? Florence 1504

Not Purty Up Close

Robert Morris at the Green Gallery, NY, Jan. 1965

Teresita Fernandez, Fire (2005)