AP Art History Veteran’s Day ‐ War Art Mrs. Cook

For all three artworks (Slide 1, 2, & 3), label each artwork with the name, artist, date, and medium. What is the meaning and context of each image?

Slide 1: Slide 2: Chapter 27 Chapter 27

In addition, answer the following questions. How does the artist use symbols that relating to war, such as bombs, guns, or soldiers? How is violence and human suffering depicted in this work of art?

Slide 3: Chapter 29 Slides 4 & 5: You will read the information below about the two slides and then answer the questions. In the Execution of Maximilian I, Manet clearly draws on the model of Goya’s earlier painting, The Third of May, 1808. Both images show the executioners at right, the executed at left. But how the scenes are rendered, the mood and tone set by each artist are distinctly different. Manet clearly draws on the model of Goya’s Third of May, 1808 in his Execution of Emperor Maximilian. Nevertheless, the tenor of his work is quite different. Answer the following questions: 1. Write a short summary of the contextual information about both slides. 2. Compare the mood conveyed by each work. How is each achieved visually? How do they represent scenes of conflict? 3. How do you think the artist’s personal relationship to the subject matter might have influenced his rendering of the moment of conflict in each case? 4. Would you say that one piece is more subjective than the other? Why or why not? 5. Manet’s work was created after the advent of photography, Goya’s before. What do you think each work conveys that a photograph might not have been able to achieve? Slide 4 Slide 5 AP Art History Veteran’s Day ‐ War Art Mrs. Cook

Slide 4: The Execution of Emperor Maximilian Slide 5: The Third of May, 1808 Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883) Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828)

Befitting the nature of the historical event on which its subject matter is The 1808 invasion of Spain by ’s army and the succeeding based, Édouard Manet’s painting of the execution of Maximilian I is far French occupation, which lasted until 1814, had a profound impact on more complex than it first appears. . In 1861, allied troops from , Spain, and Britain invaded Mexico to Goya had explored themes of irrationality, folly, and corruption in recoup debts owed to them by the Mexican government. French earlier works including the satiric , but images he created occupation of the country followed, and in 1863, Napoleon III of France during and after with France were much darker, both offered to make Austrian Archduke Maximilian emperor of the territory. emotionally and visually, than anything he had done previously. Napoleon’s plan to rule Mexico through Maximilian was not just In the gruesome Disasters of War series begun in the 1808, but ineffective but, in fact, disastrous. By the time Maximilian arrived in published decades later, Goya created images that were unambiguously Mexico in 1864, France’s control there had weakened substantially. anti-war. Rather than taking sides in these prints, Goya focused on how Within a year and a half, Napoleon announced the withdrawal of French war brings out the basest human instincts. In two monumental paintings troops. Abandoned and unprotected, the emperor was captured by from 1814, Goya presented a more politically charged perspective. Mexican nationalists and sentenced to death. His execution in 1867 sent Created for a public audience, the two paintings—The Second of May, shock waves through Europe. 1808 and The Third of May, 1808—commemorate events from the The culminating work in series of compositions treating the same subject beginning of the war. The first image represents a bloody encounter that produced by Manet between 1867 and 1869, the Execution of took place between the French army and the people of who rose Maximilian depicts a contemporary event of political significance. The up against them. The second depicts the execution of the rebels by the firing squad and the condemned men—Maximilian and two of his French on the following day. generals—are clearly identifiable and there is no question about the action With The Third of May, 1808, Goya has made an image of actual that is taking place. Yet, the way the artist has set the scene seems oddly historical events, but enhanced them for maximum dramatic effect. The detached from the gruesome violence it implies. This is most obvious in condemned men stand before a firing squad on the hill Príncipe Pío, one the figure of the officer on the far right, who calmly checks his rifle, and of several locations where such executions took place. The recognizable the line of rather apathetic spectators, who peer over the rear wall. architecture of the city in the background lends immediacy to the scene. Maximilian’s hat tilts upward to frame his head almost like a martyr’s But it is the figures to the left of the composition that demand the halo, but his face is painted roughly and seems washed out. viewer’s attention. The main figure, dressed in white, practically glows. In the Execution of Maximilian, Manet seems as much concerned with art Holding out his arms in an unmistakable reference to the crucified historical quotes and references as with the event he portrays. The Christ, he appears as a heroic martyr. While the faceless French soldiers composition of the painting is a direct echo of Francisco Goya’s on the opposite side are rendered almost inhuman, the ill-fated Spanish famous Third of May, 1808 in which the massacre of Spanish citizens by rebels elicit both sympathy for their suffering and respect for their French troops is depicted. While Goya’s image includes absolute heroes sacrifice. and villains, the tone of Manet’s work remains coolly ambiguous. Functioning almost like reportage, the painting seems to resist taking a definitive stance on the controversial events surrounding Maximilian’s execution. Indeed, the artist seems to have borrowed elements of the work from eyewitness newspaper reports circulating in France. Despite its aesthetic claims to objectivity, the Execution was implicitly critical of Napoleon III. As a result, the French government censored a lithograph version of the work and the painting itself was denied public exhibition until 1879.