Art in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century - Essay Example

Art of the late 19th and early 20th century is typified by a rejection of tradition. Explore this idea through the analysis of at least 5 works of art typical of this time. When it seems that a new man or a new school has invented a new thing, it will only be found that the gifted among them have secured a firmer hold than usual of some old thing. Walter Sickert. Was Sickert right or did artists of this period reject classical art? Movements in art emerge from time to time. They are not necessarily a rejection of what has gone before as the artists concerned may be more centred upon exploring the new rather than deliberately rejecting what has gone before. Changes in other fields may affect art either directly or indirectly. Paint ready mixed in tubes was invented in 1841 according to Greg Simpson in his article ‘The Impressionist Movement’, and became widely available in the 1860s. Before this time artists had to grind their own colours and keep them in little sacs. The tube paints meant that artists found it much easier to get out of the studio. It also meant consistency of colour – yellow ochre would always be that particular and reliable shade. They could go out at night, in fog, in rain. Nothing stopped them. Even the growing railway system was used to advantage to take artists far and wide. They began to paint what they saw around them rather than using models in studios. Renoir is quoted by Simpson as having said:- Without tubes of paint, there would have been no impressionism. Thanks to the mobility that paint in tubes provided, artists could capture the light of a fleeting moment of the day, and the impressions that it provided. So did the artists of this period reject the past as they moved into the new? Rejection Renoir for one appreciated the art of his predecessors – ‘Titian’s courtesans make you want to caress them’. Despite this he moved on to techniques unknown to classical artists such as Titian. The new techniques used by him and his fellows, such as the recording of immediate experience, and so the avoidance of formal composition, were not appreciated by the officials who controlled the salons. Their works were wholeheartedly rejected. This is turn led to them putting on their own exhibitions. In this case they were the rejected rather than the rejecters. The Industrial Age Another invention was the camera.“ Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.” said Renoir as quoted on Art Quotations. This meant they could paint what they wanted, capture the light as it really was and often this was in informal scenes of everyday life. It also meant they had a new tool to use. Several artists are known to have worked from photographs. But also there was a flip side. The camera could capture a scene exactly as it could be argued that there was therefore less need for artists to faithfully reproduce a scene. Instead they explored techniques that the camera was not capable of, at least at that period. They could consider too other aspects - colour values, inner meanings, and the use of unconventional methods such as collage. However, on page 558 of Art A New History, Paul Johnson describes what was happening in America where there were an increasing number of illustrated magazines and papers in which the work of artists had to compete with photographs and which therefore required realistic work. This is one reason he says why American art remained fixed with realism. Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette –A. Renoir The Moulin de la Galette was a popular place of entertainment in Montmatre. It was named for the pancakes, or gallettes, served there. The clientelle was not the upper classes, but working class young people.Renoir seemed to delight in being able to fill his canvas with people. Some of those depicted are portraits of known people such as Renoir’s model Margot and the sister of another model. At the foreground table are depiected some of Renoir’s friends, including Georges Rivière who would describe in L’Impressionniste “The Moulin de la Galette” as ‘a page of history, a precious monument of Parisian life depicted with rigorous exactness.’ This large oil on canvas ( 131 x 175 cm) was taken in the first instance to the scene, but would have been finished in the studio later. The immediacy of the scene, the various lights, natural and from lamps, and the quick moving dancers led to some blurring rather than clear cut edges and it seems that this was one reason why such works were rejected. Many artists now considered to have been very innovative had in fact received classical training. Degas for instance is said by Paul Johnson in his ‘Art : A New History’ ( page 589) to have learned a lot by copying Old Masters in the Louvre. Pablo Picasso is an artist very much associated with the 20th century, dying as he did in 1973. He is also thought of as being innovative and modern with his cubism, blue period, pink period etc, but he too began in a conventional way as can be seen in his self portrait of 1896. P.Picasso , Self Portraits of 1896 and 1907 When this work is compared with another of Picasso’s self portraits from 1907, only 11 years later, it can be seen how his art has moved on towards Cubism, yet at the same time this remains a portrait that, apart from a change in the hair style, is obviously the same young man. The relative sizes of the majority of the various components are the same for instance – the ears, nose and lips. Only the eyes are larger, perhaps because Picasso had come to realize their relative importance. It is important to note that just as much care has been taken with this portrait as the former one. The painting has been described as mask like and may have been influenced by African art with which Picasso had a fascination. He may have moved away from traditional western art, but this does not mean that he necessarily rejected all it had to offer. Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ is quite a different type of picture with its exaggeration of reality. Paul Johnson (page 606) describes how it liberated artists from conventional rules with its huge brush strokes and vibrant colours. But, for the most part, Van Gogh was self taught, though he is known to have met up with the Impressionists, so he could in one sense not be accused of rejecting his classical training, although early works of his are very conventional. It should be remembered that the painting was carried out while the artist was a patient in the St Remy Asylum. No sky ever really looked like this, but the swirling patterns and obvious brush strokes help the viewer to move around the painting. Yet even such an unconventional work has links back to the classic tradition. The dark mass on the left, trees perhaps, with its curving lines mirrors the curves in the remainder of the canvas. The village and its church are painted in a quite traditional way and represent stability. Despite the unusual techniques the sky at night is something we can all relate, so this is something familiar and yet new and the combination is part of its attraction. There are familiar components- the moon and stars, but this is no real pattern of celestial bodies as seen from earth and the sizes of the stars are exaggerated. A classical artist would have reproduced the sky as he saw it, certainly as far as sizes and luminescence were concerned. But the woks of such artists works have a sameness about them and even the most careful reproduction of nature doesn’t have the vibrancy of this work. Van Gogh was ahead of his time perhaps. He only sold one picture during his life time so his work certainly wasn’t appreciated. Ask anyone about Van Gogh now and it is his later works with their huge brush strokes and exaggerations that will be mentioned. Few will be aware of his earlier, more conventional pieces. Starry Night , Vincent Van Gogh, 1889 If Van Gogh and Picasso could be classed as rebels, by moving on from the past, others tried to make the journey in a different direction. The pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England was formed in 1848 and continued into the late Victorian period. It began at a time when revolution was in the air with the Chartist movement at its peak. The Pre-Raphaelites wanted to attack convention, but their target was the artistic establishment. According to Geoffrey Hodgkins in his article ‘E’s Favourite Picture: Elgar and the Impressionists’ they “yearned for the truth to nature, directness of appeal, simplicity of sentiment and high moral purpose” that was European art before Raphael. Harold Osborne in The Oxford Companion to Art ( page 922) describes their work, especially that of Holman Hunt, as social realism, as they sought to introduce a moral dimension to their works At first the critics were heavily against them. The recent BBC programme notes for ‘Desperate Romantics’ describes them as the punk iconoclasts of their day, although the foremost art critic of that time, John Ruskin was full of praise. Instead of the impressions of Paris, these men studied nature microscopically in order to reproduce it exactly. But their work in its own way was just as innovative as Van Gogh or Monet. They saw the art of their day as theatrical and wanted to bring it back to reality. If one looks at their works ideas of romance and the idealization of womanhood are the predominating themes and their pictures can be just as theatrical as those of other artists as in their portrait of a bride and her bridesmaids. The subject is taken from the Bible - the song of Solomon ‘My beloved is mine and I am his’ ( Bible, King James Version, song of Solomon, 2 v 16). It is unusual for Rossetti in that there are many figures rather than one, and also one of those is an African. It is a strange combination of the somewhat erotic and the religious, showing as it does the exact moment when the bride draws back her veil to reveal her beauty to the bridegroom. The edges are sharp and the colours are vivid, achieved by painting on a wet white ground. No one would mistake this for a work by an Impressionist, yet the two periods overlapped. This was the High definition television of its day. The Beloved , Dante Gabriele Rossetti, 1865-1866 Conclusion So it seems that if there was rebellion it took many differing forms. It seems that few if any artists of this period totally rejected the art of the past. Many had classical training and it was by copying traditional pieces that they learnt their trade. This included such matters as creating proportion and balance and learning how to guide the eye around the canvas. Many have expressed their admiration of early artists. Others, such as Holman Hunt, who trained at the Royal Academy in London quickly discovered that he had only contempt for the British art of his day, finding nothing to either emulate or to admire, according to the Artchive web page ‘William Holman Hunt.’ The artists of the late 19th and early 20th century were however were living in a very different world from their predecessors– new materials, new tools, new opportunities. The world was changing very rapidly and people were being exposed to new ideas and new methods in a way no previous generation had, so it is unsurprising that art changed too. Once young artists saw the works of people such as Renoir, Gauguin, Chagall etc they realized that it was possible for them too to break away from convention and to introduce their own ideas. The Turner exhibition is known to have influenced Whistler and Monet. The latter visited an exhibition of Turner’s in 1870 and the links between the three could recently be seen in an in an exhibition at Tate Britain in 2005. Looking at the exhibition catalogue it will quickly be realized that these three are a continuum, rather than each being quite separate, as is described on the Guardian UK web page ‘Turner, Whistler, Monet, 2009. The same could be said to be true of many other works. The artists perhaps saw themselves as moving on and innovating, which is true. But in the majority of cases the new was built upon a firm base of the old and tried methods. Most still started out in art colleges with conventional teachers teaching conventional styles. Only when they knew the required techniques could they decide what to keep and what to discard. According to Brainy Quotes Picasso once said “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.” On another occasion he is quoted as saying “Are we to paint what’s on the face, what’s in the face or what’s behind it? I t is a question to which the answer might be “All three”, something almost impossible using conventional methods. In the same way artists such as Renoir, Monet and all the rest weren’t out just to paint a pretty scene but the life behind it. They weren’t so much rejecting conventional methods and styles as extending them. References Bible King James Version Johnson, P. ( 2003) Art, A New History, London, Weidenfield and Nicolson Osborne, H. ( 1984)The Oxford Companion to Art, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Sickert, W. quoted by Auden W.H. and Kronenberger, L. (1970) in The Faber Book of Aphorisms, London, Faber and Faber Electronic Sources Desperate Romantics, BBC, available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lvyr1 (accessed 13th August 2009) Hodgkins, G., E’s Favourite picture: Elgar and the Pre-Raphaelites. The Victorian Web, available from http://www.victorianweb.org/mt/elgar/elgar1.html (accessed 13th August 2009) Picasso, P. Self Portrait 1896, Olga’s Gallery, available from http://www.abcgallery.com/P/picasso/picasso.html ( accessed 12th August 2009) Picasso, P. Self portrait 1907, Artquotes, available from http://www.artquotes.net/masters/picasso/pablo_selfport1907.htm ( accessed 12th August 2009) Renoir, P-A., Art Quotations, available from http://quote.robertgenn.com/auth_search.php?name=Renoir ( accessed 10th August 2009) Renoir, P-A. Le Moulin de la Galette, available from http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/renoir/moulin-galette/ (accessed 10th August 2009) Rossetti, D.G. , the Beloved, Walker Art Gallery, National Museums , Liverpool, available from http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/picture-of-month/displaypicture.asp?venue=2&id=75 ( accessed 13th August 2009) Simpson,G. The Impressionist Movement available from http://www.suite101.com/lesson.cfm/16928/336/1 (accessed 10th August 2009) Turner, Whistler, Monet, Guardian UK 2009, available from http://arts.guardian.co.uk/pictures/0,,1408329,00.html ( accessed 12th August 2009). Van Gogh, V. Starry Night , 1889, Vincent Van Gogh Gallery, available from http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starryindex.html ( accessed 12th August 2009) William Holman Hunt, Artchive, available from http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hunt.html ( accessed 13th August 2009) Read More