Modern Art Impressionism Modern Art Impressionism In 1874

Modern Art: Impressionism

Modern Art: Impressionism In 1874, a group of artists called the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. organized an exhibition in Paris that launched the movement called Impressionism. Its founding members included Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, among others.

Modern Art: Impressionism • The group was unified only by its independence from the official annual Salon, for which a jury of artists from the Académie des Beaux-Arts selected artworks and awarded medals. • The independent artists, despite their diverse approaches to painting, appeared to contemporaries as a group. While conservative critics panned their work for its unfinished, sketchlike appearance, more progressive writers praised it for its depiction of modern life.

Modern Art: Impressionism • Edmond Duranty, for example, wrote of their depiction of contemporary subject matter in a suitably innovative style as a “revolution in painting”. • The exhibiting collective avoided choosing a title that would imply a unified movement or school, although some of them subsequently adopted the name by which they would eventually be known, the Impressionists. Their work is recognized today for its modernity, embodied in its rejection of established styles, its incorporation of new technology and ideas, and its depiction of modern life.

Modern Art: Impressionism • Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, exhibited in 1874, gave the Impressionist movement its name when the critic Louis Leroy accused it of being a sketch or “impression, ” not a finished painting. • It demonstrates the techniques many of the independent artists adopted: short, broken brushstrokes that barely convey forms, pure unblended colours, and an emphasis on the effects of light.

Modern Art: Impressionism • Rather than neutral white, greys, and blacks, Impressionists often rendered shadows and highlights in colour. • The artists’ loose brushwork gives an effect of spontaneity and effortlessness that masks their often carefully constructed compositions. • This seemingly casual style became widely accepted, even in the official Salon, as the new language with which to depict modern life. • In addition to their radical technique, the bright colours of Impressionist canvases were shocking for eyes accustomed to the more sober colours of Academic painting. • Many of the independent artists chose not to apply the thick golden varnish that painters customarily used to tone down their works. • The paints themselves were more vivid as well. The nineteenth century saw the development of synthetic pigments for artists’ paints, providing vibrant shades of blue, green, and yellow that painters had never used before.

Modern Art: Impressionism • Images of suburban and rural leisure outside of Paris were a popular subject for the Impressionists, notably Monet and Pierre-August Renoir. • While some of the Impressionists, such as Pissarro, focused on the daily life of local villagers, most preferred to depict the vacationers’ rural pastimes. • Monet’s characteristically loose painting style complements the leisure activities he portrays. • Monet in particular emphasized the modernization of the landscape by including railways and factories, signs of encroaching industrialization that would have seemed inappropriate to the Barbizon artists of the previous generation.

Modern Art: Impressionism was a movement of enduring consequence, as its embrace of modernity made it the springboard for later avant-garde art in Europe.

Modern Art: Impressionism: Recap • Impressionism was a modern art movement, that was started in France. • It was revolutionary and antiestablishment. • Famous Impressionist artists include Claude Money, Edgar Degas and Pierre August Renoir. • Dramatic and colourful movement. • Focused on the effect of light. • Often depicted leisure activities like dancing and sailing. • Loose, unfinished style that comes into greater focus from a distance.

Modern Art: Impressionism: MONET • CLAUDE OSCAR MONET • French. • An undisciplined child who regarded school as little better than a prison and escaped when he could. • He was widely known in his locality for his witty caricatures. • Boudin, a local landscape painter noticed Monet’s work and took him under his wing, exposing Monet to what would become a life-long passion: painting outdoors, on location. • They believed that there was a vitality to work produced outdoors that could not be replicated in the studio.

Modern Art: Impressionism: MONET • When Monet became older, he left Normandy and headed to Paris, to begin his artistic career. • In 1862 he was called into service to tour Algeria. He only lasted in the service for a year before he had to return to France due to Typhoid. He claimed the vivid experience of colour and light in Africa as being a major influence on his work. • Monet chose not to go to the traditional Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and instead began to study under the academic but relatively more open minded Charles Gleyre. • Here, he met Bazille, Renoir and Sisley.

Modern Art: Impressionism: MONET • Monet was the natural leader of the group: proud, self-confident and independant. • He had no time for the tired academic system: he was determined to follow his own path. • Monet painted studies that brimmed with sunlight. • However, he wanted to not only work as he wished, but earn a living selling his work also. But in order to make a name, an artist had to gain acceptance at the Salon. • In order to gain acceptance, he exhibited two sea paintings in a conservative, more traditional manner.

Modern Art: Impressionism: MONET • However, when Monet began to put forward large-scale figure paintings, he was met with hostility. • His pieces did not conform to accepted ideas about finish or suitability of subject matter. • They didn’t have a smooth ‘licked’ surface and the brushstrokes were clearly visible and textured. • What’s more, the paintings were of modern, everyday life. • This was a direct insult to the academics who believed that large-scale painting was only appropriate for grand heroic subjects that told a moral or political story.

Modern Art: Impressionism: MONET • This unconventional combination of large canvases and modernlife subjects had been pioneered by the Realist Courbet and taken up by Edouard Manet. • Monet’s method: • He would only paint when the sunlight was falling correctly on the subject. • If the light effect changed, he would be unable to continue he work. • In order to maintain a fixed position in front of his subject, he even dug a trench and lowered his canvas into it so that he could reach the upper section without changing his viewpoint. • The alternative – using a stepladder as was customary in the academic studios would have changed his point of view to one looking down on the subject from above.

Modern Art: Impressionism: MONET • Monet’s inspiration: • As well as being inspired by Manet and Courbet, Monet was inspired by Japanese woodblock colour prints which featured unusual cropped compositions, and bright flat colour. • The impact of light on a subject and how changing light could have a transformative effect fascinated Monet. • He strove to represent things as he saw them, focusing on the shifting colour to build his images instead of on fine details. • He was an advocate of ‘plein-air’ painting, or of painting on location. • Monet sought out different weather and light conditions in his travels to further explore his obsession. • His depiction of everyday scenes and impressionistic, expressive paintings would influence many artists for decades to come, including Van Gogh.

Modern Art: Impressionism: MONET • By 1870, he was extremely well off and he returned to his home at Giverny to concentrate exclusively on his lily-pond and garden. • In the midst of the first World War he painted his world famous series of enormous studies of his water lilies. • They constitute the summit of his art, although despite his failing eyesight he continued to work on motifs from his garden and pond until his death in 1926.

• MONET: IMPRESSION, SUNRISE, 1873. Oil on canvas.

Modern Art: Impressionism: MONET • MONET: IMPRESSION, SUNRISE, 1873. Oil on canvas. • This piece is credited with the inspiration for the art movement’s name. • Has become a leading emblem of the movement. • The scene painted was of the harbour of Le Havre, in France. • It characterizes Monet’s work throughout his lifetime, and is sketched in oil paints on canvas, and executed quickly, to capture the atmospheric or natural light moment.

Modern Art: Impressionism: MONET • MONET: IMPRESSION, SUNRISE, 1873. Oil on canvas. • Displays the characteristic small, broken brushstrokes and prismatic colours that Monet favoured. Forms are merely suggested and detail is sacrificed for a sense of movement and fluctuation, echoing the shifting tide. • The bridges in the background hint at industrial modernity. • The sun is placed against the dawn sky, with orange and blue-violet contrast. • Because it was a very misty morning on the harbour, the clouds are colored by the rising sun, in the dense mist, and the boats take shape, without great definition. • The abbreviated, darker brushstrokes in the water, create motion, and ripples, while hints of orange and yellow appear as a reflection of the sunrise in the water. • The ships’ masts are sometimes disrupted by the rippling water, as the silhouettes of the boats seem to be disappearing into the mist.

• MONET: the Manneporte Etretat, 1886. Oil on canvas.

Modern Art: Impressionism: MONET • MONET: the Manneporte Etretat, 1886. Oil on canvas. • Monet spent most of February 1883 at Étretat, a fishing village and resort on the Normandy coast. • He painted twenty views of the beach and the three extraordinary rock formations in the area: the Porte d'Aval, the Porte d'Amont, and the Manneporte. • The sunlight that strikes the Manneporte has a dematerializing effect that permitted the artist to interpret the cliff almost exclusively in terms of colour and luminosity. • Most nineteenth century visitors were attracted to the rock as a natural wonder. Monet instead concentrated on his own changing perception of it at different times of day. • Monet painted the dramatically arched projection in the cliff at Étretat six times from this angle: twice during each of three visits to the Normandy coast in 1883, 1885, and 1886. • He refined the pictures in his studio.

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: • born to a wealthy Parisian family. His mother died young and Degas’ refusal to speak of her has led critics to believe that her passing had a profound effect on his artwork, in particular his obsessive representation of the female figure. His contstant love of the female form was made more enigmatic by Degas’ celibacy. • He was greatly inspired by the Neo-classicist Ingres, who was the living representation of classical tradition in European art at the time. • Degas is one of the only Impressionists who struggled to combine his love of classical art and antiquity with his desire to represent the modern world that he lived in. • Degas was also inspired by Courbet and Rembrandt; both traditional and modern art.

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: • Because of his family’s wealth, Degas did not need to worry about selling his work in order to survive. He travelled extensively and kept detailed sketchbooks. • As a young artist, he attempted to launch his career according to the established conventions of the art world: by producing large scale oil-paintings based on historical or literary themes. • By the mid-1860 s, such grand backward-looking themes had been rejected by many of the younger Parisian painters. Degas had started to mix with such artists although his conversion to their contemporary subject-matter was gradual rather than dramatic. • One of his responses was to develop his passion for portraiture – a subject which allowed him to remain true to the tradition of the Old Masters, while simultaneously confronting the faces of modern Paris.

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: • Two elements of Degas’ style that would become famous were his freshness of observation and his vividness of execution. • Degas was profoundly inspired by the invention of photography: he dabbled himself with the medium and his unconventionally cropped compositions of dancers often look inspired by a photographic snapshot. • The experimental side of Degas’ art was encouraged by his friendship with Edouard Manet, who undoubtedly inspired Degas to move away from his traditional beginnings in art and towards the direction followed by the Impressionists. • Degas completed many studies in pastel, an unusual medium for an artist to use at the time. It allowed him to create pieces that were expressive and full of movement and vitality.

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: • Although Degas refused to be called an Impressionist, his relationship with the movement is incontestable. • He was friendly with Renoir and Pisarro and he actively promoted their exhibitions as alternatives to the official Salons. • He also participated in all their exhibitions except the seventh in 1882. • However, Degas always followed his own path: where the Impressionists loved landscapes, Degas painted the city and its populace. • When Monet and Pisarro worked in the open air, Degas preferred the studio and the carefully posed model. In place of observed natural light and countryside, Degas chose the harsh, unchanging glare of gas-lamps and stage lights.

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: • The pictures Degas chose to show at the Impressionist exhibitions included a large number of ballet subjects and he soon became known as the painter of dance. • Degas said himself, that it was not the dancers he was preoccupied with so much as the movement. He took delighted in attempting to represent movement. • At the end of the 1870 s he became aware of the work of an American photographer who had perfected a type of high-speed camera to photo animals and humans in motion. This transformed the study of muscles and limbs in motion, and fascinated Degas. • Movement was a recurring theme in his art. • Photographs had the effect of freezing motion and making it possible to study, for the first time, the unexpected distortions of the figure as it moves.

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: • Faster film and shutter-speeds meant that photographs no longer needed to be posed and the bustle of the city could be captured as it happened.

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: • Degas took delight in portraying women from every walk of life: princesses and prostitutes, flower-sellers, models both clothed and unclothed and portraits of friends and acquaintances. • However, none of these women ever seemed to have caught his heart: he lived a bachelor existence. He told friends that when it came to choosing between marriage and art he had always chosen art. • His fascination with women extended to their public and private lives: the rituals of grooming and fashion and even their routine of shopping. • He was famed for his observational skills and his unusual compositions. • A number of his drawings show a curious preference for backviews of dancers, for cropping the head or arm of his subject or for placing them eccentrically on the paper or canvas.

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: • Degas’ work places emphasis not on detail but on energy, excitement and colour. • Towards the end of the 1870 s he turned more and more to the use of pastel. The dense colours of their pigments and their suitability for pictorial effects like smudging, softened focus and texture complemented his obsession with the visual effects that could be achieved through the photographic medium.

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: ABSINTHE (also called IN A CAFE), 1875/6, oil on canvas

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: ABSINTHE, 1875/6 • The models were an actress and an artist at the Café de la Nouvelle-Athénes. It is a classic image of the vacant isolation of one addicted to the now forbidden drink. The unusual composition is reminiscent of a documentary photograph and the angles of the tables that lead us through the image are harsh and unforgiving. The shadows are stark and although the female figure is seated next to a man, there is a disconnect between the two which serves to isolate both individuals. • This piece is also a brutally honest representation of modernity as Degas saw it: the subject matter is not grand or mythical: it portrays a sadness and isolation that is common and familiar. • This view of modern life in all its truth was a common feature of Impressionist art and this piece is as poignant today as when it was first made.

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: CAFÉ CONCERT AT LES AMBASSADEURS, 1876 -77, Pastel on paper

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Edgar Degas: CAFÉ CONCERT AT LES AMBASSADEURS, 1876 -77, pastel on paper • A vivid depiction of a favourite subject in one of Degas’ innovative mixed media; in this case monotype and pastel. • Again, the shadows are stark and pronounced; vase swathes of darkness amidst the harsh glare of stage lighting. • As a result, the key figure on stage is a dramatic contrast of bright highlight and deep shadow, giving her a highly theatrical feel. • Modernity is highlighted in the portrayal of the fashion of both the audience and the cast. • The composition is cropped and invites us to participate in the image ourselves, as if we are part of the avid and energetic audience.

Modern Art: Impressionism: DEGAS • Remember, when talking about these works of art try to include your own observations and thoughts about the piece. This will gain you extra marks. • ALWAYS begin discussing a piece with a clear description of WHAT IT IS; what can we see in the picture? What is happening? What types of colours have been used? What era/style is it in? how do we know this? • Many of you seem to presume the examiner will know what you are talking about but you really need to write your essay as if it’s going to be read by a Maths teacher who has no prior knowledge of art. Keep it clear and concise: everyone should be able to visualise the piece clearly after your description of it. Then you can discuss it in detail, covering areas like composition, colour, symbolism etc.