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Defining Impressionism

Defining Impressionism. The Impressionists held in common:. A. A rejection of industrial life 1. Emphasis on landscape & country 2. Emphasis on realistic scenes of city life (perhaps some with critical commentary??) Thus pushed in 2 contradictory directions

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Defining Impressionism

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  1. Defining Impressionism

  2. The Impressionists held in common: A. A rejection of industrial life • 1. Emphasis on landscape & country • 2. Emphasis on realistic scenes of city life (perhaps some with critical commentary??) • Thus pushed in 2 contradictory directions B. What painting ought to be & ought to do: 1. Most had some sort of academic background & most rejected it; Impressionists wanted a spontaneous reaction to images & therefore the sketch became a painting-and every immediate reaction/sensation became a final product 2. From the above came the idea of quick execution b/c any delay would betray—give an instant of your perception 3. Color & light are same, which means color is not a chemical element but an OPTICAL element

  3. Impressionist Optics & Style • Technique & Attitude of Individualism shared by a group of artists unofficially led by Manet • Impressionist artists distinguished themselves by the manner in which they conceived and responded to the issues of individual truth & its relation to a universal truth & the concept of the impression [effect-sensation produced by the subject] provided the theoretical means for approaching the relation b/w these two • Style Rubric-begin with a clean slate—optical in its redefinition of the pictorial • 1. Rejection of Chiaroscuro • 2. The depiction of the interaction of light & color en plein air • 3. The structure of discreet color notes, juxtaposed against, but not blended with their adjacent tone • 4. Equalizing of brushstrokes across the surface of the canvas [a density of paint all across the surface using daubs (taches) of color] • 5. Render the sensation • 6. Sketch-like brushwork • 7. Lack of conventional drawing as well as modeling & composition • 8. Especially unconventionally bright, juxtaposed hues

  4. 1. The Social Group to which the artist belonged: • Associated with the group • Professional affiliation & personal sympathy • Principle of commutation: individual style exemplifies group style • Exceptions: Degas & Cézanne • Corot supported the Impressionists even though he cont’d to exhibit among the official Salon

  5. Degas, LaBlanchisseuse

  6. Degas, The Dance Class (La Classe de Danse), 1874

  7. Paul Cézanne, The Hanged Man's House, 1873Oil on canvas, 55 x 66 cm (21 3/4 x 26"), Musee d'Orsay, Paris

  8. Paul Cézanne. A Modern Olympia. c. 1873. Oil on canvas. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Franc

  9. Corot. Ville d’Avray, ca. 1867, o/c. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art. “What there is to see in painting, or rather what I am looking for, is the form, the whole, the value of the tones…That is why for me the color comes after, because I love more than anything else the overall effect, the harmony of the tones, while color gives you a kind of shock that I don’t like. Perhaps it is the excess of this principal that makes people say I have leaden tones.” In his aversion to shocking color, Corot sharply diverged from the Impressionists, who embraced experimentation with vivid hues.

  10. 2. Subject-Matter • Plein-air subjects-views of the sea, the landscape, city streets, & the vie moderne of Parisian cafés; Several in Salon exhibited works in these subjects • Exceptions: Stanislas Lépine, for example, lacked a major stylistic characteristic—unconventional bright color

  11. Renoir , Les Pont Des Arts1867 Stanislas Lepine, Paris, le pont des Arts(year unknown)

  12. Stanislas Victor-Édouard Lepine. Quais of the Seine - Pont Marie

  13. Stanislas Victor-Édouard Lepine. Bords de Rivière en Été, c. 1880-1890(Banks of the river in summer) oil on canvas

  14. Stanislas LépineMontmartre, rue Saint-VincentEntre 1835 et 1892Huile sur toileH. 67,5 ; L. 48,5 cmParis, musée d'Orsay,

  15. 3. Style or Technique • Bright colors & sketch –like finish of the Impressionist paintings • Some critics linked Impressionist color to the elimination of Chiaroscuro (this leaves out Degas who uses chiaroscuro, yet he certainly was innovative with his representations of motion and of modern urban life)

  16. 4. The Artistic Goal or Purpose • Shared a certain kind of subject-matter and certain stylistic innovations • Little was said about aims at the beginning—usually critics discussed technical innovations instead—Impressionism should be noted for its material means and not its doctrines • Notion of individualized sensation—how to reconcile that with the notion of objective naturalism

  17. Jules Castagnary; Théodore Duret, & Georges Rivière: aims not unique or no aims at all. Castagnary: 1874: discussed Impressionist paintings with regard totechnical innovation: “the object of art does not change, the means of translation alone is modified;” Impressionism should be noted for its “material means,” not its “doctrines.” Warned of the danger of such technique becoming idiosyncratic and idealized. Duret & Rivière: in late 1870s: stressed the technical innovations of the radically sketch-like surface & noted especially the juxtapositions of touches of unusually bright color. Both implied that it had simply been necessitated by the concern for a more accurate observation of nature. [Imp. Color was therefore more natural & true to nature because of individualized sensations. But neither critic explained how the notion of individualized sensation could be reconciled with that of an objective naturalism. This question remains unresolved, usually even unasked, & is of central importance to an understanding of both Impressionism and Symbolism.]

  18. Independent artists preoccupation with the “impression”: • Technical devices for rendering the impression: • sketch-like brushwork; accentuated, spontaneous brushwork • lack of conventional drawing as well as modeling & composition • 3. unconventionally bright, juxtaposed hues • The Impressionist artists distinguished themselves by the manner in which they conceived and responded to the issue of an individual’s means at arriving at truth or knowledge, & the relation of this individual truth to a universal truth. [Impressionist and Symbolists shared this traditional concern]. For the Impressionist artist the concept of the “impression” provided the theoretical means for approaching the relation of individual & universal truth. • Impression = imprint = mark or the trace of the physical interaction. • Impression is always a surface phenomenon. • Impression = effect [effet] • Both an accurate view of nature & an individualized sensation • The distinction is this: the impression took place in the spectator-artist, while the effect was the external event. An impression of the effect, but the effect seized was the impression received!

  19. The impression is the embryo of both bodies of one’s knowledge, subjective knowledge of self and objective knowledge of the world; it exits prior to the realization of the subject/object distinction. Once the distinction is made the impression is defined as the interaction of a subject and an object. An art of impression, the primordial experience could there fore be seen as both subjective and objective […]

  20. “[These artists] are impressionists in the sense that they rendernot the landscape, but the sensation produced by the landscape.” Jules Castagnary

  21. Edouard Manet. The Escape of Rocherfort, 1880-1881. Edouard Manet. The Escape of Henri de Rochefort, 1874

  22. Pierre Auguste Renoir. Study Torso, Sunlight Effect, c. 1875-76.Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

  23. Edouard Manet. Argenteuil, les canotiers, 1874. Oil on canvas. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tournai, Tournai, Belgium.

  24. Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, A Rainy Day, 1877 Jean Beraud.The Church of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, Paris, 1877

  25. Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884). Haymakers. Les Foins, 1877, 181 x 199 cmParis, Musée d'Orsay The artist has powerfully captured the epic of the French countryside and depicted the peasants in their simplicity and despondency: the young woman sitting in the foreground is haggard with weariness. The scene is inspired by a poem: "The reaper stretched out on his bed of fresh grass Sleeps with clenched fists while The tedder, faint and fuddled, tanned by the sun, Sits vacantly dreaming beside him […]. "The painting clearly exceeds the scope of this mild text and was indeed very popular at the 1878 Salon. The composition is daringly photographic: the horizon is unusually high, allowing the hay "like a very pale yellow cloth shot with silver" to fill the main part of the canvas. The effects of accelerated perspective, the light palette, and close framing of the figures are signs of modernity within the naturalist approach.

  26. Jules Breton, The Song of the Lark, 1884

  27. http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/home/flaneur.htmlhttp://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/home/flaneur.html http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/images/wallpaper-mainpage.html http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/home/arcades.html

  28. Henri Fantin-Latour. Portrait of Edouard Manet.1867. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Manet’s stylistic discoveries, such as ‘there are not lines in Nature’, which led to his abandoning of the conventional outline and his shaping the forms by means of color and subtle gradation of tints, decisively influenced the Impressionists, but their representation of light and optical reactions to color were different. Some say Manet never painted what could be called a truly Impressionist picture, though his later work was certainly influenced by them.

  29. Charles Baudelaire: The Painting of modern life—“one must be of one’s own time”

  30. “The true painter we’re looking for will be the one who can snatch from the life of today its epic quality, and make us feel how great and poetic we are in our cravats and our patent-leather boots. Next year let’s hope that the true seekers may grant us the extraordinary delight of celebrating the advent of the new!” -Charles Baudelaire As Baudelaire wrote in 1863, modernity meant rapid metamorphoses – “the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent [and] the transitory”.

  31. Edouard Manet. The Funeral. c. 1867. Oil on canvas, 28 5/8 x 35 5/8" (72.7 x 90.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In September 1867 Manet interrupted his work on the Maximilian series to attend the funeral of his friend, the writer Charles Baudelaire. He memorialized the event in this painting, which would become the source for the cemetery and landscape in the background of his final painting of Maximilian's execution.

  32. Illustration by Harry Clarke for a London edition of Poe dated 1923 • Phan·tas·ma·go·ri·a • a shifting series of phantasms, illusions, or deceptive appearances, as in a dream or as created by the imagination. • 2. a changing scene made up of many elements. • 3. an optical illusion produced by a magic lantern or the like in which figures increase or diminish in size, pass into each other, dissolve, etc.

  33. Edouard Manet. Music in the Tuileries Gardens. 1862. Oil on canvas. 76 x 118 cm. National Gallery, London

  34. Music in the TuileriesDETAIL of Mme Lejosne1862, Oil on canvas76 x 118 cmNational Gallery, London

  35. The artist needed only to open his eyes “to the spectacle of fashionable life and the millions of irresolute existences that circulate in the underworld of the big city.” …Baudelaire

  36. Constantin Guys. Girls in a Bordello Constantin Guys. Demi-mondaines, ca. 1852-60. watercolor on vellum, ca. 27 x 19 cm in "Constantin Guys, Fleurs du mal," at the Musée de la Vie romantique, Paris

  37. Constantin Guys: LogeSource: Wikimedia Commons Constantin Guys. Girls on the Balcony

  38. Constantin Guys. Reception, n.d. Pen and brown ink with brush and watercolor, over graphite, on ivory laid paper178 x 197 mmNot signed Constantin Guys. After the Ballet, n.d. Pen and brown ink, with brush and gray wash, over graphite, on ivory wove paper, 100 x 100 mmGift of Robert Allerton, 1925.366

  39. Edouard Manet. Portrait of Victorine Meurent. 1862. O/c. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Edouard Manet. The Street Singer. c.1862. Oil on canvas. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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