NCEA Level 3 Art History 91484 (3.3) — page 1 of 6

SAMPLE ASSESSMENT SCHEDULE

Art History 91484 (3.3): Examine the relationship(s) between art and context

Assessment Criteria

Achievement / Achievement with Merit / Achievement with Excellence
Examine involves explaining the relationship(s) between art and context. / Examine in depth involves explaining the relationship(s) between art and context, with supporting evidence from art works and/or other sources. / Examine perceptively involves evaluating the relationship(s) between art and context, with supporting evidence from art works and/or other sources.

Evidence Statement

Expected coverage Question One – Italian Renaissance
Example of Achievement level response:
There was a lot of art in churches and there were a lot of churches because everyone was very religious and the church had all the money and used the money to build very grand churches. Churches were the biggest buildings, especially cathedrals, which were in every town. Cathedrals were churches where a Bishop had a seat and it was in the centre of the town with a square in the front so people could gather. Going to church was really important so churches were really big and they had towers or spires so you could see them from a long way away because there weren't any road signs. Rich people would donate money to the church to pay for art works like altar panels, frescoes, and sculpture, and their names would be remembered because they had made such grand donations. Inside the churches there was lots of art, with paintings on the wall and sculptures all around and people could learn the stories of the holy world from them or worship them. At the front of the church was an altar, which was very grand and usually had gold on it to make it look holy.
Example of Merit level response:
The close relationship between art and churches can be seen in the photo of the interior of Sta Croce. The pointed arches show that it was built in the gothic period when religion dominated everyone's life. The stained glass windows are also gothic and they have pictures of saints in them to teach people about those saints. The picture also shows other important types of art, which could be found in the church – frescoes on the wall that were usually narratives and a gilded altar which is for the priest to use and people to pray in front of.
Masaccio's Enthroned Madonna is a good example of the type of painting found on the very ornate high altar panels, which would be found on the main altars of large churches and cathedrals. The gilding would flicker in the dull candlelight, which would make it look very spiritual and impress the worshippers. The priest would use the table-part of the altar to make communion on and it was raised up above the rest of the church so that everyone could see it clearly and know that something holy was going on. The beauty and richness of Masaccio's altar panel helped to create a religious atmosphere in the church.
The side altars of churches were used for personal and family prayers and were dedicated to saints whose lives provided role models for ordinary people. Donatello's sculpture of Mary Magdalene made for a side altar in the Baptistery Florence where it provided a focus for prayers of repentance and helped people realise that they could gain forgiveness for their sins.
Example of Excellence level response:
Much of the importance of the art in the church was its role in creating a glorious world quite unlike the earthly world outside the church. The stained glass windows of Sta Croce created coloured light inside the church, which was very effective in creating a spiritual atmosphere, which materialised the presence of God. Masaccio's Enthroned Madonna has an image of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. When the priest celebrated mass, he stood in front of this image to show that the bread and wine were the body and blood of Jesus. The people who came up to the front of the church would walk towards this altar panel and this would make them feel that they were in the presence of Jesus and Mary. The iconic crucifixes, which were suspended above the altar on invisible wires, would impress the congregation and increase their sense of awe. Together the art works created a rich and spiritual atmosphere, which helped to materialise Christian doctrine.
Many church rituals were closely related to the art works in a church and the art in the church had an important role in creating a setting for the processions and rituals which took place inside the church. Priests could refer to particular art works or chapels on particular Holy Days and draw attention to the frescoes, which illustrated the stories being celebrated. Masaccio's fresco of The Trinity can be seen in the nave of Santa Maria Novella. This fresco is a good example of the importance of art in providing a visual image of some of the abstract concepts of the Christian church. People who had trouble understanding the idea of the Trinity when priests spoke of it could look at this fresco and see it in physical terms. Visual evidence of Christian beliefs and sacraments was especially important during the Italian Renaissance because many worshippers could not understand the Latin used in the services.
Expected coverage Question Two – Italian Renaissance
Example of Achievement level response:
During the middle ages people weren't supposed to spend money decorating their homes so they gave their money to the church but during the Renaissance many families in Italy grew very rich and began to build themselves large houses like palazzo and villas. Palazzos were large buildings in the city, often clustered around piazza or on the sides of rivers. Villas were country houses on farms and one architect called Palladio built a lot of these. Once they had built their houses they liked to spend money decorating them and began getting artists to decorate houses with frescoes, portraits, sculpture, furniture, and tapestries. This is called private patronage and it grew fast after 1400 and it encouraged artists to develop styles, which were more decorative than it had been. It also made some artists like Veronese very rich. Palazzo were often very plain on the outside especially the bottom which was where the family did their business like the Medici's bank. Inside rooms were very decorative.
Example of Merit level response:
Alberti designed the Rucellai Palazzo for an important Florentine family around 1450 and it is a good example of the impressive palazzo built at this time. It is built right onto the pavement and looks a bit like a fortress. The outside is fairly simple but it is decorated with pilasters and other classical patterns because this was fashionable. There was no garden outside but inside there was a beautiful courtyard where the family could be without being seen. This palazzo was in the centre near the Duomo and the Medici palazzo shows how rich and important the Ruccellai family was.
Piero della Francesca's portraits of Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro are examples of the sort of portraits, which were commissioned by ruling families in the Italian renaissance. These are formal, profile portraits, which present their subjects as wealthy rulers with their land stretching out behind them. The artist has carefully recorded the textures of the expensive fabrics they wear and Battista's is wearing her family jewels to show how wealthy they are and to show that they are the ruling family.
Example of Excellence level response:
The Ruccellai Palazzo was one of many built in the centre of Italian cities during the Renaissance. Wealthy families like the Ruccellai and Medici competed with one another for the most strategic sites and the most impressive buildings. Positioned right on the pavement with their solid rusticated walls leading the eye upwards to the upper storeys, this palazzo clearly demonstrated the wealth and status of their owners. At the same time, these buildings contributed to the urban environment, framing open streets, which led to piazza and churches. The interiors of palazzo were divided into public and private areas. The public areas usually included ground floor business premises and workshops, which were usually plain and business like. The second floor was called the piano nobile and included public reception rooms, which were richly decorated to provide a suitable setting for the public affairs of the wealthy owners. The decoration of these rooms provided a great deal of work for Italian artists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and encouraged the development of large-scale decorative schemes such as that of the Camera degli Sposi painted by Mantegna for the Sforza family. This included portraits and decorative treatments such as the trompe l'oeil ceiling. Works like this allowed an artist to demonstrate his flair and genius, at the same time emphasising the wealth and position of the patron who could afford to hire such an accomplished artist.
Expected coverage Question Three – Modernism
Example of Achievement level response:
By the end of the nineteenth century the Pacific and Africa had begun to make their presence felt in Europe and this led to changes in art because many artists like Matisse, Picasso and Kirchner were really interested in art from other cultures and began to put bits of it in their paintings and sculptures. There was a big exhibition in Paris in 1900 and different countries had exhibits where you could see them making their art. The French were fascinated by this and some artists like Picasso collected statues and masks and things and kept them in their studios where they could look at them as they worked. They called this non-European art primitive and some artists thought this could help them develop new styles of art, which weren't caught up with styles from the past.
Example of Merit level response:
Picasso's interest in primitive art can be seen in the figures of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which he painted in 1907 and which was a watershed in western art. The figures are flat and angular like the statues behind Picasso in the picture. The two central figures are a bit like Byzantine icons but other figures have mask-like faces and show that Picasso was interested in the different art forms in foreign lands and that he was trying to copy them and change European art. This painting was very influential and other artists like Braque copied Picasso's ideas in Le Grand Nu and soon Cubism had been invented. The cubists were copied by other artists like Kirchner and Die Brucke who used this style to express their feelings about how Europe was changing and that maybe Germans were losing touch with their roots.
Example of Excellence level response:
The development of both Cubism and German Expressionism clearly owes a great deal to the influence of non-European art. Influenced by their experiences of new non- European art, the Cubists and Expressionists developed new techniques and styles which prepared the way for the diverse stylistic developments of twentieth century art. Their flattening of space and stylisation of form led to experiments in art, which eventually led to abstract art.
German expressionists were inspired by non-European art in their responses to the increasing materialism of modern Europe and they used these influences to enable viewers to experience the instinctive response to nature that was seen as part a natural life that had not been corrupted by modern industrial life. Paula Modersohn Becker worked in a naïve style, influenced by the primitive art of Russian German peasants to create images of important human traditions such as motherhood and child rearing which contrasted with the depersonalising effects of life in the growing cities of Europe.
The flattened angular forms of early cubist works like Les Demosielles d'Avig,non were obviously linked to the forms of the African and Oceanic artefacts collected by Picasso. European art had traditionally sought to create a unity of time, place, and action, but these principles did not concern many artists in non-European cultures. When scientists like Einstein raised questions about western certainties, the art of Africa and Oceania provided artists with new styles and techniques, which enabled them to break down the traditional conventions of western art.
Expected coverage Question Four – Modernism
Example of Achievement level response:
Science was changing rapidly in the early twentieth century. X-rays had been invented, there were lots of new medicines, Einstein had discovered relativity and Rutherford split the atom. Science had helped people like William Alexander Bell invent the telephone and trains and cars had changed lives and made things faster. Microscopes had helped people see things they couldn't see before and things like electricity and the radio were invisible so people started thinking about things they couldn't see instead of thinking everything real was visible. This made artists start to think about abstract art and they stopped painting things that looked real and began investigating relationships between forms and space which Picasso called “realising form” and Braque said was “materialising space”. These two were Cubists and this was one of the movements, which was influenced by science and started changing art.
Example of Merit level response:
Cubism was one of the new styles of art, which emerged because of the new scientific discoveries. Picasso and Braque were both interested in new ideas about relativity and this encouraged them to experiment with multiple viewpoints instead of sticking to the one-point perspective tradition. One stage in Cubism was called synthetic and in this stage artists used materials like the rope in Still-Life with Chair Caning by Picasso so that they could explore relationships between art and technology.
Another style to explore the impact of science was Futurism, which was really most interested in machines, and speed, which was now possible because of the scientific developments in this period. Boccioni's Dynamism of aBottle in Space is a sculpture which has a fragmented spiral form to show the displacement of air around an object which scientists were just beginning to understand.
Example of Excellence level response:
Scientific discoveries were a really important factor in the emergence of new styles of art in the early twentieth century. Although some characteristics of new styles can be attributed to the influence of primitivism or to technological innovations like the invention of the tube, it is obvious that the emergence of new styles represented different attitudes and experiences, many of which can be attributed to scientific discoveries. New twentieth century styles, which were influenced by new scientific discoveries, include Cubism, Futurism and Suprematism.
The work of nineteenth and twentieth century scientists like the Curies and Einstein had challenged traditional European ideas about physical reality. Now people had to accept that many realities were unseen and not part of the physical world. These new concepts of relative time, microscopic life, the potential of flight encouraged artists to experiment with abstract art and the depiction of unseen realities. These concepts were certainly part of the Delaunay's exploration of Orphism in works like their Windows Series and Simultaneous Contrasts. Robert Delaunay's Homage to Bleriot clearly represents a response to the new scientific discoveries, which have opened up the world of flight.
Expected coverage Question Five – Beyond Modernism
Example of Achievement level response:
New York was the most exciting city in the world in the twentieth century. After World War II, America had grown very wealthy and New York had become the world's fastest growing city with lots of immigrants including artists and architects who were refugees from Hitler in Germany. They brought the influences of European modernism to New York and rich people like Peggy Guggenheim patronised them and encouraged them to develop modern art in America. New York had a grid plan and its big International Style skyscrapers created a skyline of big boxes which were separated by roads where millions of cars went all day and night. At night the streets were lit up by electric lights and neon signs were on every corner advertising consumer goods. It was a fast and exciting world, which seemed great on the surface but underneath there was another side to this big city.