Art in the Age of Revolution - Essay Example

? Art in the Age of Revolution Introduction: Social Realism Art which is also at times referred to as Socio-Realism, reflected its presence as portrayals of injustice with respect to society and race as well as economic adversity. It made it possible through unembellished pictures of struggles in life time and again representing activities of working class as valiant. The movement represented a fashion of painting in which the scenes characteristically communicate a message of social or political objection framed with satire. In the later periods of time, this movement was found even in the USA where normal life scenes, which were beyond the coarse side, from Americans were also included in the paintings. This had been found to have a powerful influence on mid twentieth century accepted civilization. However gradually with time the practice started fading away with other edgy styles of art being in place (Contemporary Social Realism, 2010). The Realist Movement in French Art had prospered from around 1840 and continued till the late nineteenth century. During this time, it conveyed an ingenuous and objective image of modern life. Realism materialized during the consequences of the 1848 Revolution that reversed the dominion of Louis-Philippe and developed during the time of the Second Empire under the control of Napoleon III. The French society was fighting for democratic reform and the Realists of the time were depicting arts based on democracy by representing subjects of the modern times considered from everyday lives of human beings who belonged to the working class (Nineteenth-Century French Realism, 2012). The present study focuses on learning about the extent to which the label ‘socialistic’ applied to Realism as a movement in the mid-nineteenth century France with reference to work of several artists. Nineteenth Century French Realism: The concept of Realism was based on direct examination of the modern world. It abandoned the idealized classicism of intellectual art and the striking ideas of Romanticism. Gustave Courbet had stated in 1861 that “painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist in the representation of real and existing things” class (Nineteenth-Century French Realism, 2012). Believing in this idea, the Realists recorded in often resolute aspects of the current day survival of modest people that paralleled with the associated movements in the naturalist literature of Emile Zola, Honore de Balzac, and Gustave Flaubert. The assessment of the working class into the area of high art and literature overlapped with the socialist philosophies of Pierre Proudhon and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, which were published in the year 1848 and led to an urge of manual revolution (Nineteenth-Century French Realism, 2012). Gustave Courbet was a great French painter and he developed the term Realism in art to sum up a fashion of painting that emerged in France after the 1848 Revolution. The painters and sculptors who followed Realism wanted to express neither magnificence nor attractiveness. Rather it was all ordinariness that they were focused into. Artists of the time completely surveyed the limits of this artistic concept. Popular artists like Auguste Rodin succeeded in initiating this heroicism in their works. The mid nineteenth century school of French Realism was an introduction for numerous other movements of the modern art related to Realism that appeared later in the twentieth century. Social Realism was also included in these movements (Artists of the Realism School (c. 1840-1900), n.d.). Socialist Realism in Modern Art: In the field of modern art, the concept of Social Realism is conventionally linked with interwar American art. It provided remarks on social, economic, and political conditions that existed during an era of Depression. There were two movements of modern art that could be associated with a left-wing character. These were the American Social Realism and Soviet-inspired Socialist Realism. There had been significant events that actually led the American artists to shift towards realistic approach in painting and art. These events included the Great Depression and the Fascism uprising in Europe (Social Realism (c.1930-45), n.d.). Socialist Realism is however different from Social Realism. Socialist Realism comprises of those paintings and arts that contain a social message with it. Socialist Realism was actually political art that could be assessed in relation to four basic principles- (1) direction towards the people (narodnost), (2) ideological narrative (ideonost), (3) class content (klassnost), and (4) the role of infusing workers with the spirit of communism (partiinost) (Socialist Realism (c.1920-80), n.d.). Realism, in France and in French art in the mid-nineteent century, could be considered as the foundation of Modernism, the perception which has well-versed the art of the twentieth century till the 1970s. Realist painting was challenging since it was involved with matters relevant to society during the period when the artworks were produced. Courbet painted life in mid-nineteenth century France, which did not include scenes of peasant life which was visible in any country at any time in history. Courbet and others too believed that it was crucial for an artist to belong to his own era of time. This did not mean a denial of the past or custom. However, it made the artist to overview the society critically, with standards and rules of the present times. Thus the label of socialist can be associated with the realistic approach of art in France in the mid nineteenth century (Introduction to Realism, n.d.). Extent to which the Label ‘Socialist’ applied to the Realism Movement in French Art: In France, the concept of Realism was deliberately accepted as an artistic curriculum during the mid-nineteenth century. It was the time when attention cropped up in recording formerly unnoticed characteristics of present-day life and society. The highlights of the realists on objectivity and impartiality, together with logical but controlled social condemnation, turned out to be essential to the narrative in the late 19th century. It also critically expresses and denotes unnecessary detailing or obsession with insignificant, low, or filthy issues (Chapter 2 Social Realism, n.d., p.2). However, although the Realism approach undertaken and accepted in the French art in the mid nineteenth century had intentions to send social messages through their paintings and arts, yet the label of Socialist was not significantly used with the approach. Rather, it was Realism that actually prevailed in French Art in the mid nineteenth century. It was during the second half of the nineteenth century that social realism was gradually being evolved from the French Revolutions in art. Socialist Realism was not in existence until the 1930s. It was then in 1934 that Socialist Realism was made the certified form of art of the USSR by Joseph Stalin and afterwards made universal by other Communist parties.  It was a demand by the concept of Socialist Realism that all arts would be required to portray some characteristic of struggle done by the human beings toward socialist development for an improved life.   It was essential to the communist management that it could be highlighted by Socialist Realism Art not only realism but also the confidence and bravery of the community (Barge-Haulers on the Volga by Ilya Repin, 2012). The most rational artistic expression of Realism in art was in France in mid-nineteenth century. It followed the era of Romanticism, which supported freedom in the concept of art and articulateness, considering the natural world as their basis. Courbet in his Realist Manifesto declared his aim as "to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch according to my own appreciation" (Rubin, 2012). Association of authentic depiction of his period of time with creative autonomy, he made both fundamentals the basis for the revolution of which he had become the acknowledged head. During the 1840s, the generation of Courbet illustrated on two artistic trends that were related. One was the Barbizon School of landscape painters that considered people and places from a landscape that was identifiable, generally close to Paris. The other one was the current attractiveness in literature and art of regional and country life. The qualities and virtuousness of country folk were inscribed in novels written by George Sand and stories by Champfleury who was a friend of Courbet. Other painters like the Leleux brothers and Jean-Francois Millet personified this philosophy in their depictions of peasants. Besides, effortless, simple folk art and poetry were accepted as immature expressions of the fashionable society as well as the working class (Rubin, 2012). At other places, Courbet stated that "Realism is the negation of the ideal" and that it could be used to "arrive at freedom" (Rubin, 2012). He viewed Realism as deliverance of human awareness from fake philosophy that was capable of controlling one's fortune. His ideas were based on the writings of the people of his country as well as associates, the far-reaching theorist Proudhon, who established the social thought in France in the 1840s. It was also the time when Karl Marx's early writing was prevailing. Realism was linked with Impressionism when it had first materialized. It was so because Impressionism undertook the obligation to present life and contemporary environments (Rubin, 2012). Impressionism was a movement of art that initiated in France during the 1860s and 1870s. There were independent impressionist exhibitions held in 1874 till 1886 where painters including Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Armand Guillaumin, and Paul Cezanne participated. They were finally joined by Gustave Caillebotte and Mary Cassatt who was an American. Edouard Manet was intimately recognized with the Impressionists (Impressionism - Impressionist Practice And Purpose, Neo-impressionism And Beyond, Bibliography, 2012). These principles directed Edouard Manet, even though he depended on the instance of realism of Spain and focused on urban freedom instead of rural labor. Claude Monet was sociable with Courbet and depended on his system and beliefs, similar to many other Impressionists. However the superior inheritance of Realism was made available to free artists who had to paint sincerely based on their own mental picture. “Realism successfully undermined doctrinal academicism by legitimizing images of modern life, heroic or anecdotal, rural or urban, and painted as the artist chose. Realism even entered sculpture, as in the work of Jules Dalou” (Rubin, 2012). French Art Times: Realism: Considering the issue of fine arts in France, the word ‘realism’ has expressed several different significances. Till the last part of the nineteenth century it frequently represented the natural world, or the external world as it could actually be observed. This approach pressurizes the perceptual knowledge against the indicative outlook through image or concept. In this regard, realism could be used to explain the naturalism of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio who was an Italian painter and his followers, which came into sight at the end of the 16th century. During the recent times of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century the term realism has been used to portray the revolution to move away from generalization and move towards figurative art. Realism, however, is also used to depict abstract art that views actuality as internal genuineness and stand against sheer manifestations (Art Periods: Realism, 1999). The original meaning of realism was invented in the movement that was leading mainly in France from the period around 1840 to 1870-80 and that is recognized predominantly through the works of Gustave Courbet. The primary examples for nineteenth-century realism in France can be obtained in the work of artists painting in the Caravaggio convention. However, Realism was categorically a development of its era which was one of the great political and social disturbances. The turbulence stimulated the realists to decline existing standards of scholastic and idealistic art and to embark on instead an autonomous, practical exploration of life as it survived around them. Thus they painted common human beings and everyday lives. Even though other artists also portrayed related issues in the past, the realists obtained a new and impassive vision (Art Periods: Realism, 1999). Realism was most vigorously asserted in the year 1855. It was the time when Courbet, agreed for a confidential presentation of his creations that were focused on his huge The Artist's Studio, after he was rejected for the Paris Exposition. He also disseminated a proposal of realism sketching out his agenda. There were other realists too in the plan. These included Honore Daumier, who was most renowned for his insightful ridicule of the trivial bourgeoisie, as well as Jean Francois Millet, whose scenes involving peasants were more thoughtful in tenor than those of Courbet. The previous works of Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas were realist, and, similar to Courbet's, they too held essentials that foreshadow impressionism. “The art of the Pre-Raphaelites in England and of Adolf von Menzel in Germany is also related to the realist movement” (Art Periods: Realism, 1999). Gustave Courbet and the Development of Realism: Courbet had a significant role in the development of realism and its association with socialism in France and in French art in the mid nineteenth century. His art rejected classical and theatrical styles of the French Academy. Instead his creations were focused on the reality of the objects that he could observe, even if the reality was ordinary and simple. He tried to represent his idea of realism in art as a means to bring into light the peasants and the lives of the common people of his times. He was very well known for his involvement and response to the political upheavals that grasped France and its citizens in front of his eyes. The concept of realism as expressed and supported by Courbet could be associated with the extensive investigation into the material world that used science in the nineteenth century (Gustave Courbet, n.d.). Role of other French Artists in the Birth of Realism: The English literature of the Nineteenth century is noteworthy for its elevated artistic attainment and for diversity. The utmost literary movement of its former era was of romanticism. It was initiated in the environment of the fierce financial and political commotion that distinct the later part of the eighteenth and the first part of the nineteenth century. The outbreak of political activity carried on by the Great French Revolution of 1789, the wars with Napoleon's France that devastated Europe for about 25 years were the leading political services at exertion. The adversities of the manufacturing and agrarian rebellion whose cooperative consequence was an ongoing transformation of all features of social life in England made the state of affairs widespread with category detestation (Diakonova, n.d.). Since the time of the Social Realist paintings of Courbet, the aspiration to replicate realism has undertaken several different forms of art. New media has substituted older media in their capability to reconstruct reality. Still photography has replaced the forms of painting. Film photography has substituted still photography and digitization has replaced analogue film photography, while 3D has taken the place of 2D (Croidheain, 2010). Thus the development of the socialist realism in the field of art can be realized to have been significantly taken an important place in the expression of lives and human beings. Realism is a form of presenting the work of art in which different issues are portrayed in as simple a way as feasible, exclusive of romanticizing them and without any rules of formal artistic theory being followed. The initial Realist work began to come into view in the eighteenth century, which came as a response to the extremes of Romanticism and Neoclassicism. This is apparent in the paintings of John Singleton Copley, and also in some of the creations of Goya. However the great era of Realist was the middle of the nineteenth century, during which the artists became disenchanted with the pretense of the Salons and the power of the Academies. Realism was flanking to be a planned movement in France, involving inspirations of artists such as Camille Corot, Jean-Francois Millet and the Barbizon School of landscape painters. Apart from Copley, American Realists also included the painters like Thomas Eakins, and Henry Ossawa Tanner, who studied in France. “French Realism was a guiding influence on the philosophy of the Impressionists. The Ashcan School artists, the American Scene painters, and, much later, on the Contemporary Realists are all following the American Realist tradition” (Art Movements, n.d.). Conclusion: From the above study, it can be very well concluded that during the mid nineteenth century, French artists had significantly given rise to the revolution involving Realism in their art and avoided Romanticism. The main purpose of this plan was to bring out the lives of the common people of their times in the representations and portrayals of the arts and paintings as well as literature. This can be considered to have an association with the social aspect of lives as well since the depictions would communicate some message or the other in regard to the human lives and their society. However the label of Socialist was not much obtained in the movement and Realism was considered more suitable to the movement and the acts of the artists as represented through their works. Thus, as far as the movement is concerned it can be said that the French Art in the mid nineteenth century had taken significant measures towards their society trying to focus and represent their conditions through their paintings and creations but the label of socialist might not been involved or attached to realism to great extents in this regard, although their works did have socialist message for the world. 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