Art Movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries - Essay Example

The stretch of time beginning from the 1800s until the 1945 was consensually referred to as the “modern world by artists and Prior to the fateful occurrences of the three most significant revolutions in the world, namely the French Revolution, American Revolution, and Industrial Revolution, these vibrant works of art were exclusive for the eyes of the aristocrats; but because of technological growth and brisk societal changes a new social class emerged which was the industrialized middle-class who endeavored on the production, promotion, and consumption not only of necessary commodities but also leisure activities such as art museums. In accordance to the rising demands for visual arts, art-enthusiasts established the first national museum on the year 1793 in Paris which they named Louvre. This famed art museum placed for the first time in France a haven for the arts that were previously and exclusively owned by the aristocracy; it showcased these fabulous arts to individuals of all walks of life. Furthermore, due to the aforementioned significant revolutions, art movements developed in a rapid scale which was largely characterized by “isms”: Impressionism, Realism, Fauvism, and so on. These movements duly represented societies that were freshly liberalized from the stronghold of the Church. France was the pinnacle of success for every artist in the 19th century. Annually, a Salon was held wherein exceptional artists had the grand opportunity to display their magnum opus to public scrutiny. However, a fortuitous incident happened in 1863 which gave birth to one of the most influential movements in the period, the Impressionism. A Salon jury declined huge numbers of submitted works of art which angered the artists and prompted them to create another exhibition which they called the “Salon des Refuses”. Spearheading this movement was Edouard Manet who notoriously displayed his “impressionistic” paintings such as the celebrated Luncheon on the Grass. However, the term Impressionism came from Claude Monet’s, who was another famous artist of the movement, Impression: Sunrise. The Impressionist movement is also referred to as optical realism by some artists because of its scientific and modern themes in the genuine visual familiarity and its accent on illumination and movement on the overall façade of entities; one of the utmost exemplars of impressionism is Edouard Manet’s controversial painting. Edouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass stirred much controversy because of the paintings vulgar symbolisms. He was an ardent French painter and one of the notable artists in the 19th century who made use of contemporary themes which ushered in the advent of modern art. He painted his most intriguing two-dimensional art, Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur lherbe) probably between 1862 and 1863. This painting depicted an unusual outdoor picnic, in which there were two men clothed with a rather decent suit, enjoying the tranquility of the woodland nature while conversing, and with them was a naked woman and on the background was a bathing woman in a stream wearing only a transparent garb. Apparently, Manet yearned for the realization of his two objectives by painting this art, namely to introduce the energy in portraying modern life through art and to elevate modern art as a noteworthy theme for the scrutiny of the grandmasters of museums. Likewise, this painting attracted the attention of art historians who considered it anomalous since they cannot ascertain the precise meanings embedded in the image; they had observed that the figures were quite flattened and appeared to have been illuminated by a swift burst of light. The bather, according to some viewers, was placed in the wrong perspective because of its distance to the three other figures and its seemingly giant form in an imagined standing pose. It was obvious that Manet positioned the bathing woman at the center of the three other figures poised in a triangular shape to put emphasis on his painting’s top premise. Moreover, the flatness of the painting was basically due to the bather’s seemingly moving forward movement to bond with the rest of the figures which as a result constricted the foreground and the background. Also, the woodland background itself presented spatial tensions because of the noticeable imbalance between the left and the right landscape. The left region of the painting depicted a place thinning into a distance whereas on the right side there was just a plane bright green. This dissimilarity between the two regions of the paintings hinted to the possibility that the picnickers were not situated on an actual outdoor environment but just posing in a studio. The backdrop appeared to be a man-made landscape which was consciously for the purpose of studio photography. Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass charged public scandal, flatness, superficiality, vagueness, and an intentional association to art history which positively venerated the painting as a hallmark of modern art. A different movement existed prior to Impressionism and which was extensively showcased at the Louvre Museum, the first art movement of the 19th century referred to as Realism. As the name implies, Realism was an adverse reaction to Neoclassicism and Romanticism and a fervent advocate of the “everyday and the secular rather than the historic, the heroic, or the exotic (Getlein, 2005)”. Aside from its emphasis on the ordinary, Realism also was ingrained in the present. One of the most distinguished leaders of the Realist movement was Gustave Courbet. He was a remarkable painter of allegorical masterpieces of landscapes and seascapes; also a passionate worker for the advancement of the welfare of the peasantry and the underprivileged and a zealot of truth. He strongly believed that reality should be the dominant priority of art because such arts will inevitably eliminate social incongruity and disproportion. In 1855, Corbet put on display a colossal painting entitled The Artist’s Studio. The painting showed Courbet working on a landscape canvass at the heart of the entire imagery. The scene magnified Courbet’s infallible concentration on the canvass through bordering the image with people’s sporadic movements; he advertently detached himself from the hubbub to exemplify his all-consuming artistic concerns. A boy who was expectedly interpreted by viewers as the symbol of Innocence gazed at the work in progress. Standing behind Courbet was a nude woman who was either viewed as Courbet’s Muse or the powerful epitome of the “naked truth”. Meanwhile, the people on the left region of his painting were composed of the common people whom were developed from Courbet’s personification of a rural village; whilst on the right side were consisted of individuals whom were discerned as the artist’s intellectual comrades, benefactors, and other talented personalities. Perchance, this inclusion of the aristocratic personas in his painting reveals that the artist himself was a member of specialized elite but then chose to be temporarily isolated from his esteemed social class with the company of consciously selected individuals, Innocence and Truth. His personal background documentation confirmed that his societal membership was anchored on an affluent bourgeoisie family. His affinity for the rural life was inspired by his original settlement until he departed to study law in Paris; but he did not fulfill his visions though learning the law but instead discovered his much-loved enthusiasm in nature and environment-centered painting. His clear detachment from the society of heterogeneous people manifested in his painting was a real attempt to surrender his bourgeoisie culture and outlook. Courbet perceptibly conveyed his main point in the painting which was the reality that in art everyday activities are equal; both the brilliant artist and a peasant laboring on the fields were impartial subjects for an astonishing work of art. Moreover, the painting was not just plainly an illustration of Courbet’s life but also a depiction of human life-span development from the innocent infant feeding at his mother’s breast to death represented by the gravedigger. Furthermore, Courbet did not one-sidedly embody the upper class of the society but he also promptly recognized the important existence of the middle and the lower classes. The artist’s bold attempt in secularizing art was a revolutionary move in the period which was dominantly characterized by mythologies, history, and religion. Similarly, Paris was utterly shocked by the artist’s portrayal of female nudity and attracted much public and artistic scandal. Similarities and differences between the Impressionistic and Realists movement are marked in Manet and Courbet’s paintings. There are expected variation in technique, expression, and social sceneries between the two movements yet they both opt for unadulterated and immaculate themes and both fabricate visual chronicle of nations trapped in the increasing scale of social changes such as the momentous shift from agricultural to an industrialized and urbanized civilization. Also, it is conspicuous that both Manet and Courbet made use of female nudity extensively probably to accentuate the art movement that they are campaigning aside from implicating a reality through nudity. Contrasts between Manet and Courbet’s paintings were chiefly on the technical aspects of the movement they were involved. In Manet’s painting it was visible that he used short but solid rubs of paint to swiftly embed the essence of the theme; he as well mixed very few matching colors to produce dull shades such as dark and gray. The surface that he knowingly created was starkly dense and not transparent unlike the paintings of earlier artists. Light was used to illuminate objects from the canvass and to mirror the colors of the images. Conversely, Courbet being a realist painted as realistically as he can. He painted in a straightforward manner which aptly showed the duplication of the workings of the naked eye. In terms of color use, he applied more earthly shades than just the monotonous dark colors used by Manet; colors such as brown and yellow were prominent in Courbet’s painting. Also, he avoided exaggeration of his subject matter by refraining from aesthetically titivating elements of the image; he just merely portrayed reality unlike Manet who heightened his canvass’ objects through illumination and scenery conflicts. And finally, Courbet’s painting was more timeless than Manet’s because of the former’s expertise in fabricating a stationary image contrasting the latter’s flatness of details. Another notable disparity between the two art movements was their content and composition. Impressionism deviated from the earlier preoccupation of realism on still life, portrayals, natural sceneries that were painted indoors. The impressionist discovered that they can use the power of sunlight in their arts through painting outdoors and underneath the pale blue sky. Manet’s painting vividly showed a representation of a woodland outdoor picnic while Courbet’s captured the vibrancy of the antithesis between the countryside and the city by situating himself at the center of an enclosed quarter wherein people of different status were divided by the artist’s position. Moreover, impressionism put more weight on the overall effects than on details stressed by the realists. 19th century artists viewed the crawling streets with similar admiration with nature’s magnificence because of its ephemeral glimpses of thousands of diverse lifestyles; they had discovered it breathtaking and unsettling at different times, yet they embraced entirely these new perspectives in art which they spontaneously termed as modernism. Edouard Manet, Gustave Courbet, and other noteworthy two-dimensional artists of the 19th century proved that art should not be taken for granted because just like other societal institutions that forge either a triumphant or failed revolutionary changes, art is also a perpetual tool that can bring about substantial transformation on how humanity view the world and how a particular social order functions for the benefit of the few. References Chipp, H. B. (1968). Theories of Modern Art: A Sourcebook by Artists and Critics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Geitlein, M. (2005). Living with Art. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. . Read More