4.3 Materials, Processes, and Techniques in Later European and American Art

Still Life in Studio (Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre; 1837; daguerreotype). A daguerreotype is a one-of-a-kind photograph on a polished silver-coated copper plate; there is no negative. Exposures took minutes, so Daguerre photographed still objects such as plaster casts.

Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art (Honoré Daumier; 1862; lithograph). In lithography, the artist draws with greasy crayon on stone; grease holds ink while wet stone repels it. Daumier mocks the photographer Nadar in a balloon above a Paris covered in photography studio signs. The pun asks whether photography was art.

The Horse in Motion (Eadweard Muybridge; 1878; albumen print). Using a row of cameras triggered as a horse ran past, Muybridge proved that a galloping horse lifts all four hooves off the ground at once, with legs tucked under, not stretched out as painters had shown.

The Steerage (Alfred Stieglitz; 1907; photogravure). On an ocean liner, Stieglitz photographed passengers in the cheapest class, many returning to Europe. He saw shapes: a gangway, a funnel, stairs. He argued photography could be fine art.

The Saint-Lazare Station (Claude Monet; 1877; oil on canvas). Impressionism captured quick impressions of light in broken brushstrokes. Monet painted a Paris train station's steam under a glass and iron roof, a modern subject.

Mont Sainte-Victoire (Paul Cézanne; 1902–1904; oil on canvas). Cézanne built the mountain and fields from blocks of color, simplifying nature into geometric forms and flattening space, a step toward Cubism.

The Portuguese (Georges Braque; 1911; oil on canvas). Analytic Cubism breaks forms into small, overlapping planes in browns and grays. A guitarist almost dissolves, and stenciled letters and numbers stress the flat canvas.

The Bay (Helen Frankenthaler; 1963; acrylic on canvas). Frankenthaler poured thinned paint onto raw, unprimed canvas on the floor so it soaked into the fabric: the soak-stain technique. Color and canvas become one, a key step in Color Field painting.

Marilyn Diptych (Andy Warhol; 1962; oil, acrylic and silkscreen enamel on canvas). Silkscreen prints a photo through a stencil on mesh. Made soon after Marilyn Monroe's death, it repeats one publicity photo 50 times, bright on the left and fading on the right. Pop Art borrowed mass-media images and methods.

The Kiss (Constantin Brancusi; original 1907–1908; stone). Instead of modeling clay for others to cast, as was usual, Brancusi carved the stone himself. Two figures merge into a single block, eyes meeting, reduced to essentials.

Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building (Chicago; Louis Sullivan; 1899–1903; iron, steel, glass and terra cotta). A steel frame carries the weight, so walls become wide windows; white terra cotta expresses the grid. Lavish cast-iron ornament at the entrance attracted shoppers. Sullivan coined 'form follows function'.

Villa Savoye (Poissy-sur-Seine, France; Le Corbusier; 1929; steel and reinforced concrete). Reinforced concrete has steel rods inside. Le Corbusier's Five Points: pilotis (thin columns lifting the house), a roof garden, a free plan, horizontal ribbon windows and a free facade.

Fallingwater (Pennsylvania; Frank Lloyd Wright; 1936–1939; reinforced concrete, sandstone, steel and glass). Built over a waterfall for the Kaufmann family. Concrete cantilevers, beams supported at only one end, stretch over the stream. Local stone and a boulder in the living room show his organic architecture.

Seagram Building (New York City; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson; 1954–1958; steel frame with glass curtain wall and bronze). A curtain wall is a non-load-bearing skin of glass. Bronze I-beams on the outside express the structure, even though fire codes hid the real steel in concrete. A plaza sets the tower back.