Impressionism & Post Impressionism >> p. 687+

Chapter 23
Impressionism, Post Impressionism, Symbolism: Europe and America 1870 - 1900

• Born in the late 19th century in industrialized, urbanized Paris
• Painters added to what was already going on in Realism with themes of everyday life, instead of religious, historical, epic, mythic subject matter
• They also sought to convey the elusiveness, the speed, the impermanence and the change of the culture

Claude Monet (1840 - 1926)

• Leading Impressionist 
• Living on a studio boat  - 1873 - having a floating studio - sought out to capture the light and color of the water Sailboats on the Seine "the painter and modern life"
• Preference in painting outside away from the studio en plain air -- a radical practice of the time
• Here he recorded  his impressions of the Seine -- a sharp break from studio traditions
• Fascination with the reflection of light on the water

Edouard Manet, Claude Monet in His Studio Boat, 1874 

oil on canvas 2' 8' x 3' 3"

Edouard Manet joined Monet and the two painted side by side

• Manet adopted not only Monet's subject matter, but also the younger artist's short brushworks and his excitement on the reflection of sunlight on water
• In the distance are the factories and smokestacks of modern life - factories and the industrialization along the Seine

The name IMPRESSIONISM was coined by a hostile critic of a work hanging in the Paris Salon because of its "sketchy quality and undisguised brushstrokes."  Shortly thereafter, the group of young artists adopted the name "Impressionism" 

The Art Academy in France (and other countries throughout Europe) provided instruction to students in traditional subject matter and highly polished techniques 
A group of artists unhappy and dissatisfied with the Academy's traditional teachings and conservative works adopted a renegade idea and worked against the academy.  Many tried to have works juried into the Salon, many were reject. 

Claude Monet, Saint Lazare Train Station,  1877

oil on canvas 2' 5" x 3' 5"

At close range, Impressionist paintings often 'fall apart,' but at a distance the eye fuses the brushstrokes and color.  The agitated application of paint contributes to the sense of energy in this urban scene. 

Source: http://smarthistory.org/monet-the-gare-saint-lazare/

Monet’s painting, The Gare Saint-Lazare, overwhelms the viewer not though its scale (a modest 29 ½ by 41 inches), but through the deep sea of steam and smoke that envelops the canvas. Indeed, as one contemporary reviewer remarked somewhat sarcastically, “Unfortunately thick smoke escaping from the canvas prevented our seeing the six paintings dedicated to this study.”

The Gare Saint-Lazare (also known as Interior View of the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Auteuil Line), depicts one of the passenger platforms of the Gare Saint-Lazare, one of Paris’s largest and busiest train terminals. The painting is not so much a single view of a train platform, it is rather a component in larger project of a dozen canvases which attempts to portray all facets of the Gare Saint-Lazare. The paintings all have similar themes—including the play of light filtered through the smoke of the train shed, the billowing clouds of steam, and the locomotives that dominate the site. Of these twelve linked paintings, Monet exhibited between six and eight of them at the third Impressionist exhibition of 1877, where they were among the most discussed paintings exhibited by any of the artists.

Rouen Cathedral, portal - front entrance

Claude Monet's Rouen Cathedral, 

1894 - 1895

Monet's intensive study of some 36 paintings of the entrance to the cathedral.

He observed the structure from almost every angle -- in each, the artist sought to capture the changing atmosphere; the structure bathed in light, in darkness, throughout the day.

Other Impressionist artists included: 

Edgar Degas

Pierre Auguste Renoir

Gustave Caillebotte

Berthe Morisot

others

Include your notes from Chapter 23

Post - Impressionists

source: Gardner's Art Through the Ages, 14th Edition

p. 699

By 1886 most critics and a large segment of the public accepted the Impressionists as serious artists.  Just when their images of contemporary life no longer seemed crude and unfinished, however, some of these painters and a group of younger followers came to feel the Impressionists were electing too many of the traditional elements of picture making in their attempts to capture momentary sensations of light and color on canvas...

... By the 1880s, some artists were more systematically examining the properties and the expressive qualities of line, pattern, form and color. Among them were Dutch-born Vincent van Gogh and French painter Paul Gauguin, who focused their artistic efforts on exploring the expressive capabilities of formal elements....

• influences of the camera and capturing the momentary 'cropped' picture field
• influences of Japonisme (see pg. 698) 
• influences from their earlier predecessors
• capturing the sensibility of fast moving modern life
• exaggeration of the formal elements of design; color, composition, line and form
• Expressionism came forth by using simplification of figures and faces; brighter colors and bolder lines
• ALL of the above impacted the making of the Post Impressionist works and thus increased the effect of the images on their viewers.

> Japonisme

First described by French art critic and collector, Philippe Burty in 1872, Japonism, from the French Japonisme, is the study of Japanese art and artistic talent. 

Torh Kiyonaga (Japanese) 

Two Women at the Bath

ca. 1780 multi colored wood block print

(each color is a separate carved block from a wooden substrate)

10" x 7"

• America's & Europe's extensive colonization of Japan in the 19th c. thus an exchange of ideas went on.
• Westerners became familiar with Japanese visual culture -- beauty, flat colored wood blocks, eroticism, food, silk / fashion trade, tea, opiates, furniture
• Both Impressionists and Post Impressionists artists were great admirers of Japanese art (especially the way in which illusionistic spatial fields were depicted in flat, 2D multi colored wood block prints

• The decorative quality also impacted artists associated with the Art and Craft Movement (moving back to hand made quality due to the 'machine' made goods following the Industrial Revolution).         Art should be available to the masses. Was one of the ideals of the Art and Craft Movement.

Henride Toulouse - Lautrec (1864 - 1901) 

admired Degas and shared Impressionists' interests in capturing momentary modern life.

He created many posters, paintings, drawings of individuals not in the mainstream.

" He became a denizen of the night world of Paris, consorting with a tawdry population of enterntainers, prostitutes and other social outcasts." (p. 699)

Toulouse - Lautrec, Jane Avril poster, 1893

Jane Avril

Lautrec drawing of Jane Avril

Jane Avril photograph

p. 700
Georges Seurat (1859 - 1891)

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte painted in 1884, is one of Georges Seurat's most famous works. It is a leading example of pointillism technique, executed on a large canvas.

Georges Seurat,  A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

6' 10" x 10' 1" 1884 - 1886

oil on canvas

• Post Impressionist
• Study of color theory and optical mixing of color to create "local" color
• mixing of complimentary color pairing to produce warms and cools of color temperature
• Pointillism > Neo - impressionism (new Impressionism)

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch 1853 - 1890)

• explored capabilities of color to their fullest
• distorted and exaggerated forms express his emotions as he confronted the modern life, relationships and nature
• influenced heavily by Japanese wood blocks
• through painting he felt (his many letters to his brother Theo express) could sincerely capture his emotional state
• brother Theo was an art dealer
• turbulent personality, some researchers have claimed that he may have been schizophrenic, or have suffered from lead poisoning 
• He was a self admitted patient at the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy France, since renamed the Clinique Van Gogh from May 1889 until May 1890 
• He sold one painting during his life time
• at 37 he considered himself a failure as an artist and outcast from society at large and fatally shot himself

Vincent van Gogh

The Potato Eaters, 1885

Vincent van Gogh

Flowering Plum Tree, 1887

Vincent van Gogh

Night Cafe, 1886

Vincent van Gogh

Starry Night, 1889 oil on canvas

2' 5" x 3'

Vincent van Gogh

Wheatfield with Crows, 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Paul Cezanne (1839 - 1906)

• Adopted the use of color theories from the Impressionists into his own work while studying the old Masters ideas on structure (he believed the Impressionists lacked structure of their subjects)
• "I want to make Impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the museums."
• His aim was not truth in appearance, but truth in structure

• He adopted a structurally analytical style, breaking apart subject matter into rectilinear, stacked cubes and their interrelationships
• Cezanne worked with the ordering of lines, planes and colors that comprised nature in front of his subject, always outside, like Mont Sainte-Victoire "his motif"
• He sought to paint structure, perspective (not linear perspective, nor chiaroscuro) but by recording the color patters he deduced from nature
• Cezanne worked with color temperature, cool colors recede, whereas, warm colors tend to advance

Speaking to a fellow artist, Cézanne said:

Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth....Lines perpendicular to this horizon give dept. But nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need of introducing into our light vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blue to give the impression of air.

Paul Cézanne's, Mont Sainte-Victoire c. 1902 - 1905

SYMBOLISM

p. 707

The Impressionists and Post Impressionists believed their sensations were important elements for interpreting nature, but the depiction of nature remained a primary focus of their efforts.  By the end of the 19th century, the representation of nature became completely subjective.  Artists were now concerned with expressing their individual spirit on their subject matter. 

• painters and writers saw Realism as trivial
• Rather, they expressed themselves through the significance and reality far deeper than superficial appearance
• They painted (and wrote) about their insight on subjects
• Painters called themselves "Nabis" - the Hebrew word for "prophet"
• Artists and writers were seen as mystical visionaries
• They cultivated the realm of fantasy, dreams and the imagination back into their works - subject matter far from reality
• Subject matter was often mysterious, exotic and sensuous

Odilon Redon (1840 - 1916), The Cyclops, 1898

oil on canvas 2' 1" x 1' 8"

Gustav Klimt, The Kiss,  1907 - 1908

oil on canvas, 5' 11" x 5' 11"

• Viennse Secession artist
• Symbolist - depicting the masculine and feminine spirits of the universe -- location is undefined and symbolic, gold, illuminated > uniting the embracing couple into a single entity through love, eroticism and Symbolist ideals
• Shimmering, extravagance and flat patterning
• Ties to Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts movement

CHAPTER 24 

MODERNISM IN EUROPE & AMERICA, 1900 - 1945

p. 723

• World War I, the "Great War" 1914 - devastating on the largest scale unprecedented in history.  60,000 British men lost their lives on opening day 
• By 1919, the hostilities, politics and face of war, redrew the political map of Europe
• Peace however did not erase the horrors of war.
• Culturally, one new movement erupted from the Great War, called Dada
• The Dadaists believed reason and logic were responsible for war -- thus the only route for them, was through political anarchy, irrational thought and the intuitive mind
• They worked in photomontage > collage, creating works from cut up photographs, images from magazine and pop cultural newspapers
• The process of collage allowed for them to create compositions from random chances - by making use of the materials made and produced by culture

Hannah Hoch, Berlin (1889 - 1978) collage

• Photo montages advanced the illogic of the Dada movement in their works  
• Collage provided viewers with images of the times, cut up and glued back together that were chaotic, contradictory, absurd compositions --- because the Great War left Europe in shambles, due to it's absurdity

• Commentary on the government
• Commentary on the developments of the Weimar Republic in Germany (1918 - 1933)
• The redefinition of women's social roles and the explosive growth of mass print media

German Expressionism

p. 727

Emil Nolde (1867 - 1956) Danish / German

German Expressionist

• Early 20th century following the Great War (WWI)
• Subject matter is immediate and bold in color, brutal ugliness
• Expression of figures was exaggerated and wrenching
• individuals depicted in creative works are confronting, ghoulish in clashing colors
• color and form is extremely distorted in paintings
• The German Expressionists tried to capture the political and cultural climate that was destructed by war 

Emil Nolde (1867 - 1956)

German Expressionist

Masks, 1911

Cubism & Primitivism > 

p. 732

• A new challenge on the horizon in war torn Europe
• Moved through numerous styles from Realism, through Impressionism and into Blue Period (1901 - 1904) characterized by melancholy state of mind, depicting worn and alienated figures
• Picasso moved onto the Rose Period (also known as Pink Period) in 1904, onward, works remain pessimistic in nature, but somewhat brighter than his "Blue"

Pablo Picasso, Family of Saltimbanques, 1905

Family of Saltimbanques (La famille de saltimbanques) is a 1905 painting by Pablo Picasso. The work depicts six saltimbanques, a kind of itinerant circus performer, in a desolate landscape. It is considered the masterpiece of Picasso's Rose Period, sometimes called his circus period.

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907

oil on canvas, 8' x 7' 8"

It is no secret that Picasso was greatly influenced by West African art, especially sculpture - may be in search for the Other

Rene Magritte -- 1898 - 1967

Surrealist, The False Mirror, 1928

Photograph from the 60's

Gardner's NOTES: Romanticism & Realism . Chapter 22 + pp. 643

Romanticism, Realism, Photography: Europe & America 19th century

The revolution in France 1789 and the over throw of the monarchy opened the door for a new style in art production, as well as opening the door for Napoleon Bonaparte to step into the resulting political upheaval and establish a different type of monarchy with himself as its head.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)
He was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars. 

First Consul of the French Republic comes to power 1804 - 1815 with intentional links to ancient Roman Republic. In May of 1804 he becomes king of Italy. At the end of that same year he is coronated as Emperor of the French Republic.

In 1815 - his disastrous invasion of Russia ended his retreat (and career). He was defeated by the British at Waterloo (Belgium). He was forced to leave the throne and went into exile on Saint Helena Island in the South Atlantic. He dies six years following in 1821.

Many French artists produced major artworks glorifying him. Artists remain impacted by Neoclassicism style because of its attributes to the Classical ancient world.  Often Napoleon was seen dressed in ceremonial garments and objects familiar from the Roman Empire.   

Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Cornation

Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Crossing Saint-Bernard, 1800-1801

Jean-Auguste-Dominque (J-A-D) Ingres, Napoleon on the Imperial Throne, 1806 oil on canvas

Jean-Auguste-Dominque (J-A-D) Ingres, 
Grande Odalisque, 1814
2' 11" x 5' 4" (almost life size in width)

Subject matter is of a 'fictionalized' harem of the exotic (and other), sensuousness, tactility, a hookah pipe, silks and turban from the East, peacock feathers. Ingres has no interest in anatomical "correctness" - notice anatomy of left leg and extra vertebrae in back, head too small, etc. His creative work, although abstracted, was rather academic in its delivery of Neoclassicism ideals, far from the Romantic style soon to come.

  

The painting is reminiscent of the Renaissance painting by Titian three centuries prior, below:

Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1536 - 1538

oil on canvas

3' 11' x 5' 5"

Video Link: Ingres' Grande Odalisque

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Realism p. 663

Advances in industry and technology in the early 19th century backed the ideals of Enlightenment and the study of science and onward progress. Realism was the movement that developed in France mid 19th century.  "What we see was 'real.' And that's what we paint." 
Thus, artists focused on contemporary events and rejected fictional and historical subject matter. 

The general public embraced empiricism and positivism. Realist artists concentrated their subject matter on the realities of human experience.

Empiricists = knowledge is based in observation and direct experience

Positivists, embraced philosophies of August Comte (1798 - 1857). He believed that the environment and human activity was governed by the laws of science and thus could be studied and understood through observational data.

Gustav Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849, oil on canvas

5' 3" x 8' 6"

Gustav Courbet was the leading figure of the Realist movement 1819 -1877. He painted the working class people, what seemed like mundane subject matter.  This was indeed real, and needed to be painted.  Thus, bringing focus to the middle and lower classes.  He did not romanticize nor glorify his subject matter. It is known as a great painting of Social Realism. 

VIDEO : Courbet's: The Stone Breakers

Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857 

oil on canvas2' 9" x 3' 8"

Another French artist, Jean-Francois Millet was connected with the Barbizon School.  Artists from this school focused on Social Realism, depicting the French country side.  Millet portrays three field workers gather the left overs of the harvest.  In the background we see atmosphere perspective at work - a distant village, but recognize that the three women are front and central, commanding their presence.

Honore Daumier, Third Class Carriage, lithography, print

Other Social Realist painters included Honore Daumier who worked for a great deal in printmaking - especially lithography (drawings etched into prepared litho stones). Daumier did a great deal of political social commentary.  He was a defender of the urban class. 

"Because people widely recognized the power of art to serve political ends, the political and social agitation accompanying the violent revolutions in France and the rest of Europe in the later 18th and 19th centuries prompted the French people to suspect artists of subversive intention."  p.666

Edouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863 

oil on canvas 7' x 7' 8"

Edouard Manet (1832 - 1883) was a pivotal figure in the 19th century, as was Courbet.  He was influenced by the Realists, but as younger artist, he developed the important role in leading his painterly work towards Impressionism.

Above work is a seminal work in Western art history, the question is why?

• All four individuals are based on real people (Manet's favorite artist at the time); Eugene Manet and sculptor Ferdinand Leenhof
• painting caused outrage in the Salon due to its subject matter

Critic said: "A commonplace woman of the demimonde, as asked as can be, shamelessly lolls between two dandies dressed to the teeth.  These latter look like schoolboys on a holiday, perpetrating an outrage to play the man.... This is a young man's practical job -- a shameless, open sore."

The subject matter did make heads turn, but Manet also painted the work softly and with wide, large brushstrokes - the beginnings of Impressionism.  Manet moved away from illusionism to the acknowledgement of paints properties and a loose, gooey material slathered onto a canvas.   This left canvases' looking unfinished, temporary, a fleeting moment.

Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1865

oil on canvas, 4' 3" x 6' 2"

VIDEO: Manet's seminal work "Olympia"

Realist artists concentrated their subject matter on the realities of human experience.

p. 671 

This attitude was very much in tune with 19th century American taste, combining an admiration for accurate depiction with a hunger for truth. 

Thomas Eakins, American, Swimming Hole 1884-85

Eakins was an American Realist painter who again recorded the human experience onto his canvases. He studied in the academy in Philadelphia --- and aimed to paint things he saw  rather than what he felt his public wanted to see.  In fact he is well known to paint the reality of 'off-beat' subject matter as in the The Gross Clinic below of 1875

The Gross Clinic, 1875, oil on canvas 

detail from Eakins' The Gross Clinic, 1875

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Thankful Poor

1894 oil on canvas

Another well-known African American Realist painter is Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937). He studied under Thomas Eakins, before moving to Paris. Tanner mixed Eakins careful observation of nature with his passion to paint ordinary people.  

Photography

1839, mid 19th century this technical device was invented and had an immense consequence on modern civilization.

When studying the birth of the camera, we can see traces of it go back in the to the Renaissance period, when artists used the camera obscura to shine illusions into a darkened space and trace their exact likenesses onto canvases and drawings. 

In 1807, the invention of the camera lucida (lighted room) replaced the enclosed chamber of the camera obscura.

No matter how accurate the drawn work was, artists still wanted a more direct way to capture in image.

Daguerreotype . Calotypes and Wet-Plate Photography

Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre 

(French, 1789 -1851) inventing the daguerretype -- first practical photographic processes in 1839 were announced by Daguerre and Briton William Henry Fox Talbot  (English, 1800-1877). 

Many inventors were playing with sensitized paper, pin hole cameras and other technology --- fought over who is claimed as the "inventor" of the camera. The Calotype process appeared simultaneously in France and England in 1839. 

1. The earliest of these photographs was the daguerreotype (named after Daguerre) and taken by 19th century photographic process using an iodine-sensitized silvered plate and mercury vapor. Daguerretypes were presented in Paris, excitement, information and ideas exploded! Unlike our digital cameras today, each print was unique. Soon people all over Europe and U.S. were making photographs.
   
   p. 681
   Audiences witnessed performances of "living paintings" created by changing the lighting effects on a "sandwich" composed of a painted backdrop.

The first authenticated image of 

Abraham Lincoln was this daguerreotype

of him created in 1846 -- when Lincoln was a U.S. Congressman-elect

Edgar Alan Poe

One can imagine this new artistic medium's advantages and enormous impact on culture:

• Ability to take pictures of people, location and objects with great ease
• process can catch subtle detail
• Capturing "authentic" images of those things
• It suited the philosophies in the age of   Realism
• Shifted who could have these images created and ownership, thus distributing t/o all socio-economic levels
• New answers to the representation of "reality", challenging traditional roles of pictorial representation that we see seeming back to the Renaissance
• Soon many photographers were making photographs across Europe and the U.S.

Many painters of the Realist period embraced the camera as an aid in their own painted canvases.  Artists: Delacroix, Ingres, Courbet, others.  Some artists feared it feeling that it would replace the painstaking creation of canvases. And yet the tables were also turned. As some painters looked to the new technical device's potential to their own creative works, some photographers looked to painting to inform their photographs. 

p.679
1862: Court case proved: that Photography was an art, and photographs were entitled to copyright protection.

Cameras were large and cumbersome. Quite heavy and exposure time was long to place the image onto film. Thus objects had to be perfectly still.  

Timothy O'Sullivan (Irish American

A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, PA, 1863

Documentary photography 

-- thus, begins the story of photography's 

influence on modern life.

O'Sullivan also photographed aboriginal life of the Navajo, taken near old Fort Defiance, NM

1.