Toward the Modern: An Upheaval in Art
A strong contention that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century involved the role of art. A new notion began to formulate and gain support among the more progressive artists. The new idea had several components. For one, the scene depicted on canvas did not have to be plausible but rather had its own internal logic or "natural laws" that supercede those of reality. The artist was free to combine whatever elements he desired to make his meaning. The tenets would later be summarized in the doctrine of "Art for Art's Sake."
The single, most profound consequence from the point of view of creative methodology, one which would have a myriad of ramifications, was the artist's loyalty to "pure painting." Here focus shifted from the representation that resulted on the canvas as a whole to the brush strokes and color patches themselves. The nature and shape of the individual stroke, the color of each patch, and the rhythms and contrasts the patches created became the artist's primary tool of realization and his primary concern.
In this advance, modern artists broke free of a tradition that had begun over four hundred years earlier. The tradition of the painting as a "window" came with perspective, the creation of the illusion of depth and proportion. Perspective appeared first in crude form in the paintings of Giotto, was developed technically in the Renaissance, and was accepted until the late nineteenth century as the only means to painterly organization. In the hands of progressive artists the canvas would cease to be a window and become a flat surface.
The shift from the illusion of depth to one of the flat canvas may be seen by comparing Corot's "Souvenir of Montefountaine" (the last painting in the Supplemental Lecture "Romanticism in Music and Art") and Claude Monet's "The River" (below). Most subsequent modern art examples feature the two dimensional quality as a primary style characteristic.
A second characteristic that sets modern art apart from the academically motivated art of the Romantic painter is the lack of supercharged emotionalism. To the intellectuals of the time, the new art seemed devoid of meaning. Meaning came only with the understanding that meaning was carried by the medium, not the images portrayed. As in music, the art world had had its fill of the oppresive and overwrought traditions of Romanticism.
Impressionism
True to the new thinking, Impressionists painters sought to capture a fleeting slice of life, glimpsed as in reality without full comprehension and remembered through the filter of personality. No one can see and apprehend every aspect of any single frame of view at any instant.
Claude Monet (1840-1926) concentrated on the effects of color and light. For Monet, nature offered the greatest opportunity of imagery, supplying an endless source of interplay between reflection and reality. Monet was true to his subject throughout his life, and his explorations in the 1890s caused him to paint the same scene repeatedly but under different atmospheric conditions.
Claude Monet, "The River" (1868)
Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) also concerned himself with the effects of light and imagery, but chose to capture scenes of urban life. His paintings excude human warmth and so are irresitable. Here we glimpse a scene from a pleasant afternoon in the park. Other painters such as Degas drew his material from the world of the theatre.
August Renoir, "The Swing" (1876)
By the late 1870s, Impressionism had gained wide acceptance among artists and the viewing public. In its acceptance, it was no longer a pioneering movement. Subsequent artists who sought to find the means to exceed the limitations of Impressionism have become known as "Post-Impressionists." The Post-Impressionist were not anti-Impressionism, and their efforts represent simultaneously the final deveopmental stage of Impressionism and the critical transitional stage to later styles.
Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) is the most important of the Post-Impressionists and is generally regarded as the "Father of Modern Art." As a young painter, he was a great admirer of Delacroix, an artist for whom he never lost enthusiasm, but he also immediately grasped the significance of Impressionist methods. Cezanne embraced the new tenets of brushstroke and color patch, color rhythm, two-dimensional canvas surface, as well as the concept of content as a glimpse of life or "picture of a picture."
Cezanne approached his art with one, single, revolutionary, conceptual difference from the Impressionists. This single idea was both monumental and profound, and would free all subsequent artists from the restraints of the current school. Whereas the Impressionists painted their "impresssion," that is, their subjective, reality, Cezanne sought to objectify the world he saw and painted it.
Cezanne wished to reduce the scene before him to its essence, hence freeing his art from the intrusion of the tidy mind, wherin that which is known prompts "adjustments" to conform to the normative, or untidy emotions. The Impressionist was affected by each change in point of view or atmospheric condition. Each change in conditions then required a new painting. Cezanne wished to penetrate the ever-changing kaleidoscope of color and effect and capture the scene in its underlying, unchanging, objective, truth.
Unlike the Impressionist, whose primary interest was the interplay of light and color and hence could find suitable subject matter in any scene, Cezanne chose subjects that would offer him the opportunity to impose on the overall canvas the structure of lines and color patterns. In addition, he chose subjects that would permit him throughout the process of his realization to retain the vitality of the original.
Paul Cezanne, "La Montaigne Saint Victoire" (1904)
Georges Seurat (1859-91) believed, like Cezanne, that art must be based on a system in order to make it "solid and durable." His career and reputation are based on precious few paintings. The paintings are very much the opposite of Impressionist art; they contain and element of deliberate timeless stability. His work method consisted initially of tiny, deliberate brushstrokes that made those of Cezanne look dynamic and figural. By the end of his career, exemplified in "The Parade," he had switched from tiny brushstrokes to dots of color. He intended that the dots merge in the viewer's eye and produce intermediary tints more luminous than those that could be obtained using larger color patches. The process has become known as Pointillism, Divisionism, or Neo-Impressionism.
Georges Seurat, "La Parade" (1887-88)
The end result of Cezanne and Seurat's efforts was to push back boundaries and limitations of Impressionism. Curiously, they achieved this end (and break-through) by manipulating the free and subjective style of Impressionism into a style at once more objective classically-regulated.
Expressionism
Around the same time that Cezanne and Seurat struggled to redefine the parameters of Impressionist painting, another group of artists took an altogether different tack. Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) and his compatriots embraced the new technical methods but sought the means to the new methods to express emotion. Van Gogh's came to painting only within the last ten years of his life; his early interests were literature and religion. Dissatisfied with the shortcomings and values of contemporary industrial society, he worked for a time as a lay preacher among impoverished coal miners. His lack of formal training in art, evident in the clumsiness of realization, only adds to his expressive power.
Vincent van Gogh, "Starry Night"
Aside from the collective works of van Gogh, "The Scream" of Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863-1944) stands as one of the best known examples of Expressionism. His stark style is reminiscent of Toulose Lautrc, Gaugin (see below), and van Gogh. Painted after his immigration in 1889 to Paris, "The Scream" conveys its terror without giving its source, and engages the viewer through empathy.
Edvard Munch "The Cry" (1895)
Primitivism
Like van Gogh, dissatisfaction with the values of industrial society played a critical role in the life and art of Paul Gaugin (1848-1903). Gauguin was a propserous Parisian stoke broker and art collecter. At age thirty-five, he abandoned his business and his family to rediscover a world of feelings obscured by modern society and religion. In his search for a simpler and purer life, he moved first to live among the peasants of Brittany and shortly thereafter to Tahiti.
Gauguin sought a style of expression that did not reflect contemporary Western civilization, which he felt was not inline with human reality. To this end, he turned to pre-Renaissance art for elements of style and Tahitian culture for values of lifestyle. His art shows license of contmemporary art, but the black outlines of the figures, the bold color areas, and the static quality of much of his art is as much the influence of Medieval folk art and the stain-glass window.
Gauguin ultimately came to believe that the regeneration of Western art and even civilation would come from the "Primitives," the "Noble Savage" concept of the Enlightenment that gained great currency among the Romantics. Here man lived in nature and innocence. Gauguin encouraged his collegues in the art world to seek regeneration by shunning the Greek tradition.
Paul Gaugin, "The Call" (1902)
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) was a retired customs inspector discovered by Pablo Picasso and his friends. Rousseau did not begin to paint until middle age and did not have any formal training in art. He can be described as a folk artist of genius: he conveys with simple directness the innocence that Gaguin had believed so essential to existence and had gone to such lengths to find.
Henri Rousseau, "The Dream" (1910)
posted by Richard Metzger at 8:16 AM
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