Origins and Message The Stone Breakers - Research Paper Example

GUSTAVE COURBET. THE STONE BREAKERS. 1849 INSPIRATION FOR PAINTING Like Millet, Courbet, self-taught artist, was inspired by the events of 1848 (street fighting of 1848) to turn his attention to poor, ordinary people. In 1851 he was a supporter of the whole Revolution. Thus, Stone breakers was submitted to the Salon showing his new political commitment. ORIGINS AND MESSAGE THE STONE BREAKERS This is a large painting showing two haggard men laboring to produce gravel - a man of seventy, and a young fellow in his filthy tattered shirt. Courbet saw this scene and says “…the most complete expression of poverty…”The painting is not an obvious piece of political propaganda. By hiding the faces of his two protagonists, Courbet makes it difficult for the viewer to identify with them and their plight. He treats them as two facts in a painting emphasizing the appearance, texture, and weight of things, through the use of thickly applied paint (often laid down with a palette knife) that conveys the materiality of the physical world. POLITICAL PROPAGANDA OR FATALISM? Some writers view it as an expression of conservative fatalism akin to Millet’s BUT, Courbet’s friend the socialist philosopher Pierre-Paul Proudhon, in 1865, says its the first socialist picture ever painted and Courbet referred to it as a depiction of “injustice.” HONORE DAUMIER. THE THIRD-CLASS CARRIAGE. (oil) C. 1862 INSPIRATION FOR PAINTING Bonheur, Millet, Courbet, and Daumier (1808-79) because of his sympathy with working-class people, are known as the generation of 1848. Unlike Courbet et al., Daumier often depicted urban scenes. ORIGINS AND MESSAGE: THE THIRD-CLASS CARRIAGE It shows the inside of a large, horse-drawn bus that transported Parisians along one of Haussmann’s new boulevards. Daumier places the viewer in the poor section of the bus, opposite a serene grandmother, her daughter, and her 2 grandchildren, whose intimacy and unity is contrasted to their physical and mental separation from the upper class passengers behind them. IMPRESSIONISM EDOUARD MANET. (1832-83) LE DEJEUNER SUR LHERBE ( THE LUNCHEON ON THE GRASS). 1863 BACKGROUND FOR PAINTING Frustration over the practices of the Salon jury reached its limit in 1863 when they rejected nearly 3,000 works. Napoleon III ordered their exhibition - the Salon des Refuses (“Salon of the Rejected Ones”). Le Dejeuner , scandalized contemporary viewers and established Manet as a radical artist, challenging academic conventions. INFLUENCE FOR LE DEJEUNER SUR LHERBE Manet born in Paris, studied in early 1850s with Thomas Couture. By the early 1860s Manet committed to realism, due to his friend, Baudelaire, the poet call for - “the painter of the passing moment and all the suggestions of eternity that it contains.” Manet responded to Baudelaire’s call in, Le Dejeuner. Audience’s Views Its frank declaration of modernity was offensive to the academic establishment and the average Salon-goer. Most disturbing was the “immorality” of Manet’s theme: a suburban picnic with a scantily clad bathing woman in the background and, in the foreground, a completely naked woman, seated alongside two fully clothed, upper-class men. These women were assumed to be prostitutes and the men their clients. ORIGINS AND MESSAGE Le Dejeuner sur lHerbe Le Dejeuner, a modern version of a famous Venetian Renaissance painting in the Louvre, the Pastoral Concert, by Titian and Giorgione. The 4 intended meaning of Le Dejeuner is still a debate. Some see it as a portrayal of modern alienation, for the figures fail to connect psychologically. Although the man on the right seems to gesture toward his companions, the other man gazes off absently. The nude turns her attention away from them and to the viewers: their role as outside observers; estranged. METHOD/STYLE Manet rejects warm colors for a scheme of cool blues and greens. Also his flat, sharply outlined figures, seem starkly lit because of the near absence of modeling. The figures are not integrated with their natural surrounding, as in the Pastoral Concert, but seem to stand out sharply against them, as if seated before a painted backdrop. EDOUARD MANET. OLYMPIA. 1863 ORIGINS AND MESSAGE: Olympia Olympia is the same name given to a socially ambitious prostitute in a novel and play by Alexandre Dumas “fils(the younger).” Like Le Dejeuner sur lHerbe, Olympia was based on a Venetian Renaissance source - Titian’s Venus of Urbino. At first, Olympia appears to pay homage to Titian’s painting of the portrait of a Venetian courtesan. BUT it was the very antithesis of the Titian. DIFFERENCE FROM TITIAN’S VENUS OF URBINO 1. Titian’s female is curvaceous and softly rounded, BUT Manet’s is angular and flattened. 2. Titian’s looks lovingly at the male spectator, BUT Manet’ appears coldly indifferent 3. Our relationship with Olympia is underscored by the reaction of her cat, who-unlike the sleeping dog in the Titian-arches its back at us. 4. Instead of looking up at us, Olympia stares down on us, indicating that she is in the position of power and that we are subordinate, akin to the black servant at the foot of the bed who brings her a bouquet of flowers. 5. In reversing the Titian, Manet in effect subverted the entire tradition of the accommodating female nude. AUDIENCE’S VIEWS Conservative critics vilified Olympia when it was displayed in 1865 at the Salon. PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR. MOULIN DE LA GALETTE. 1876 ORIGINS AND MESSAGE Moulin de la Galette, “Pancake Mill” By the mid-1870s Renoir combined Monet’s style (natural light) with his own taste for the figure. Moulin features dancers in bright afternoon sunlight. The Moulin, in the Montmartre section of Paris, was an old-fashioned Sunday afternoon dance hall, whose open courtyard was used in good weather. Renoir glamorized its working-class clientele by replacing them with his young artist friends and their models, shown with relaxed attitudes. Their innocent flirtations are underscored by children in the lower left. The ease of their relations is emphasized by the relaxed informality of the composition itself. METHOD/STYLE The painting is knit together not by figural arrangement but by the overall mood, the sunlight falling through trees, the way Renoir’s soft brushwork weaves his blues and purples through the crowd and across the canvas. This idyllic image of a carefree age of innocence, a kind of paradise, nicely encapsulates Renoir’s essential notion of art: “For me a picture should be a pleasant thing, joyful and pretty! There are quite enough unpleasant things in life without the need for us to manufacture more.” EDOUARD MANET. A BAR AT THE FOLIES-BERGERE. 1881-82 ORIGINS AND MESSAGE A Bar at the Folies-Bergere Manet’ last major painting. It contradicts the happy aura of Moulin de la Galette and Woman in a Loge. Folies-Bergere was a large nightclub with bars arranged around a theater that offered circus, musical, and vaudeville acts. In the center of the painting stands one of the barmaids. Reflected in the mirror behind her is a trapeze act entertaining the elegant crowd. On the marble bartop Manet has spread a still life of liquor bottles, tangerines, and flower, associated with the pleasures of the Folies-Bergere and the barmaid herself. Her wide hips, strong neck, and closely combed golden hair are echoed in the champagne bottles. The barmaid’ demeanor, however, refutes these associations. INVOLVEMENT OF VIEWERS Manet puts the viewer directly in front of her as a customer. She neither smiles at this customer, as her male patrons and employers expected her to do, nor gives the slightest hint of recognition. She appears to be self-absorbed and slightly depressed. But in the mirror behind her, her reflection and that of her customer tell a different story. In this reflection, the barmaid leans toward the patron, and meets his intent gaze, dissolving the physical and psychological distance between them. One suggestion for this juxtaposition is that Manet wanted to contrast the longing for happiness and intimacy, reflected in the mirror, with the disappointing reality of ordinary existence that directly confronts the viewer of the painting. POST-IMPRESSIONISM PAUL CEZANNE. MONT SAINTE-VICTOIRE. (OIL) C.1885-87. INSPIRATION FOR PAINTING In the early 1870s Cezanne changed his Pissarro style to the bright palette, broken brushwork, and everyday subject matter of Impressionism. He dedicated himself to the objective transcription of his “sensation” of nature. DIFFERENCES TO IMPRESSIONISTS He did not seek to capture transitory effects of light and atmosphere but rather to create a sense of order in nature through a methodical application of color that merged drawing and modeling into a single process. His aim was to “make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the museums.” The even lighting, still atmosphere, and lack of human activity in the landscape communicate a sense of timeless endurance, versus the Impressionism’ interest in capturing a momentary aspect of the ever-changing world. His paint handling is more deliberate and constructive than the Impressionist’ spontaneous and comparatively random brushwork. ORIGINS AND MESSAGE Mont Sainte-Victoire In Mont Sainte-Victoire, a prominent mountain near his home in Aix, Cezanne shows the mountain rising above the Arc Valley, dotted with houses and trees. At the far right, an aqueduct and at the left, an evergreen tree echoes the contours of the mountains, creating visual harmony between the two principal elements of the composition. METHOD/STYLE His strokes, vary from short, parallel hatchings to sketchy lines to broader swaths of flat color. They weave the landscape into a unified surface design which exists together with the effect of spatial recession. This generates a tension between the illusion of three dimensions “behind” the picture plane and the physical reality of its two dimensional surface. Recession into depth is suggested by the foreground tree, a repoussoir (“something that pushes back”) that helps draw the eye into the valley and toward the distant mountain range, and by the gradual transition from the saturated greens orange –yellows of the foreground to the softer blues and pinks in the mountain, which create effect of atmospheric perspective. This illusion of consistent recession in to depth is contrasted with blues, pinks, and reds in the foreground. PAUL CEZANNE. STILL LIFE WITH BASKET OF APPLES. 1890-94. AUDIENCE’S VIEWS Different spatial ambiguities appear in Still Life, the right side of the table is higher than the left, the wine bottle has two different silhouettes, and the pastries on the plate next to it are tilted upward while the apples below seem to be viewed head-on. Such distortions show Cezanne’s willful disregard for the rules of traditional scientific perspective which mandates that the eye of the artist / viewer occupy a fixed point relative to the observed scene. BUT Cezanne studies different objects in a painting from slightly different positions. ORIGINS AND MESSAGE Still Life with Basket of Apples Still Life‘s composition is complex and dynamic and seems on the verge of collapse. The pastries look as if they could levitate, the bottle tilts unsteadily, the fruit basket appears ready to spill, and only the folds and small tucks in the white cloth seem to prevent the apples from falling. All of these physical images are designed to show “something other than realty”-not a direct representation of nature but “a construction after nature.” GEORGES SEURAT. A SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE ISLAND OF LA GRANDE JATTE. 1884-86 ORIGINS AND MESSAGE A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte The Impressionists did not apply Chevreul’s law systematically BUT Seurat calculated exactly which hues should be combined, in what proportion, to produce the effect of a particular color. He then set these hues down in dots of pure color, next to one another, in what came to be known by the various names of divisionism (the term preferred by Seurat), pointillism, and Neo-Impressionism. VIEWER’S EYE In theory, these juxtaposed dots would merge to create the impression of other colors, perceived as more luminous and intense than the same hues mixed on the palette. In Seurat’s work this optical mixture is never complete, for his dots of color are large enough to remain separate in the eye, giving a grainy appearance. INSPIRATION FOR A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte First exhibited at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition in 1886 The theme of weekend leisure is typically Impressionist, but the rigorous divisionist technique, the stiff formality of the figures, and the highly calculated geometry of the composition produce a solemn, abstract effect at odds with the casual naturalism of earlier Impressionism. A Sunday shows a contemporary subject in a highly formal style recalling much older art, e.g. ancient Egyptian. From its first appearance, A Sunday Afternoon, seems to generate conflicting interpretations. On Sundays, the island was noisy, littered, and chaotic. Seurat’s painting may have intended to show how tranquil it should be. Was Seurat merely criticizing the Parisian middle class, or was he trying to establish a social ideal for more civilized way of life in the modern city? The key to Seurat’s ideal may be the composure of the mother and child who stand as the still point around which the others move. VINCENT VAN GOGH. THE STARRY NIGHT. 1889 METHOD/STYLE Van Gogh adapted Seurat’s divisionism, but instead of dots he applied paint freely in multi-directional dashes of impasto (thick applications of pigment), creating a greater sense of physical energy and a palpable surface texture. INSPIRATION van Gogh experienced repeated psychological crises that led to his going into a mental asylum and eventually committing suicide, in July 1890. He recorded his heightened emotional state in paintings that contributed significantly to the emergence of the expressionistic tradition, in which the intensity of an artist’s feelings overrides fidelity to the actual appearance of things. ORIGINS AND MESSAGE The Starry Night One of the earliest and most famous examples of expressionism which Gogh painted from his window in the Saint-Remy asylum Above the quiet town the sky pulsates with celestial rhythms and blazes with exploding stars. The intensity of van Gogh’s feelings is explained by the theory that after death people journey to a star, where they continue their lives. “Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star.” The idea is seen in this painting by the cypress tree, a traditional symbol of both death and eternal life, which dramatically rises to link the terrestrial and celestial realms. Is it possible that the picture’s extraordinary excitement also expresses van Gogh’s euphoric hope of gaining the companionship that had eluded him on earth? In painting from his imagination rather than from nature van Gogh perhaps followed the advice of his friend Gauguin. THOMAS EAKINS. THE GROSS CLINIC. 1875. ORIGINS AND MESSAGE The Gross Clinic The Clinic was criticized and was refused exhibition space at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial. It shows Dr. Samuel David Gross performing an operation with young medical students looking on. The representatives of science- a young medical student, the doctor, and his assistants- are all highlighted. This dramatic use of light, inspired by Rembrandt and the Spanish Baroque masters Eakins admired, is not meant to stir emotions but to make a point: Amid the darkness of ignorance and fear, modern science shines the light of knowledge. The light in the center falls the doctor’s forehead-on his mind. REASON FOR EAKINS’ SELF-PORTRAIT IN THIS PAINTING In the shadows along the right-hand side a self-portrait is included, testimony to his personal knowledge of the subject. Eakins had studied anatomy, an interest that led him to photography, which he used both as an aid for painting and as a tool for studying the body in motion. He made a number of studies with English/ American Eadweard Muybridge, a pioneer in motion photography who made landscape photographs and worked for U.S. government geographic and military surveys in the 1860s. Read More