realism overview

Mid 19th Century Art & Architecture:

The Birth of Modernism

Changing the role of art and artists

Context: Industrial Revolution

• 1848-1860s• Tech: iron, trains,

cameras• Economy: wars

ended, capitalism

1848-1860s - Economy

• Three class system– capitalists --> centralized economic control – laborers--> poor education & living conditions – middle class --> “laissez-faire”

Tenement Interior in Poverty Gap, an English Coal Heaver’s Home, Jacob Riis, 1889. Published study in NY called How the Other Half Lives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZl4KXsaKVE

Social Realism & PhotoJournalism

Mathew Brady, Civil War photographer…generals, battlefields...

Realism: Social & Political Equality

• Marx’ theory of communism

• Darwin theory of evolution• Comte: positivism…all

knowledge comes from tested scientific proof

Eiffel Tower, Gustav Eiffel, Paris, 1889, iron.

Taller than Notre Dame and other buildings in Paris.

Created for 1889 Worlds Fair

Brooklyn BridgeJohn Augustus and Washington Augustus Roebling, NY, 1867-1883

• Greatest construction achievement of era.

• Roebling, German Immigrant, had major breakthrough in suspension bridge technology (web truss).

Realism & Role of Art

– Role of Artist: • no longer to simply reveal beautiful & sublime• aimed to tell the truth • not beholden to higher, reality (i.e., God)

– Subjects:• ordinary events and objects • working class & broad panorama of society• “Show me an angel, and I’ll paint you one…”

Realism in France: Courbet (1850)

The Stonebreakers, 1850Miserable job; socialist ideals; Monumentality of everyday -Self educated artist, SALON REJECT …

Millet’s The Gleaners (c. 1857)

• Barbizon School of French painting

• Poorest of the poor, picking up scraps of grain

• Figures become part of landscape

• Haystacks and wagon reflect shapes of gleaners

• Seen as socialist painting

Rosa Bonheur’s Plowing on the Ninverais (c. 1850)

Influenced by Positivism.. Large canvas, virtues of simple country living in a sweeping panorama… noted animal painter who fought for women’s rights

Daumier’s Third Class Carriage (c. 1865)

Influence of William Hogarth

Daumier was jailed for satirizing king political cartoon

Dignity of working class, even though crammed together in mass transportation

1st piece showing dehumanizing mass transport

US Realism: Eakins’ The Gross Clinic (c. 1875)

Triangular composition with Baroque lighting

Noted anatomist who taught anatomy & figure drawing, pioneered letting black and female students study and draw nudes

Henry O. Tanner The Banjo Lesson, 1883

• American realist taught by Eakins

• 1st noted black painter

• Painterly brushwork, monumental forms

• Dignity of exchange between generations; answers ugly stereotypes of African Americans

• Unsentimental yet affectionate

US Realism: Winslow Homer’s The Lifeline

• Homer began as freelance illustrator Spent a year on N. Sea Coast of England

• Sketches of an actual event

John Singer Sargent’s Madame X, 1988

• American portrait artist much sought after in US and Europe

• This portrait caused a scandal in the Paris salon of 1888

• Sargent moved to England and painted quasi impressionist

• Captured personality of his subjects

• Painterly brushwork, outstanding capture of clothing/fashions

English – Pre-Raphaelites: the anti-Realists

• Dante Gabriel Rosetti - poet & painter

• Returned to more Venetian styles; influenced Symbolism

• Medieval stories & spirituality

“I have been here before,But when or how I cannot tell:I know the grass beyond the door,The sweet keen smell,The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.”

The Roman Widow, Rosetti, 1848

English Realism – Arts and Crafts

• Ruskin - loss of fine craft through Industrialization

• Movement leader: Morris, ardent socialist, poet, artist

• Dehumanized factory labor; loss of pride in work… search for nature

• Female artisans in metal working, textile arts, etc.

• Morris worked w/PRB artists like Rosetti and Burne-Jones

Flora Tapestry, 1885, William Morris

US Arts and Crafts Movement

• In US,: home design, furniture, and ceramics – still in use today

• Stickley furniture (Mission Style) -buy today !

• Home Depot Authentic Mission Style Lighting Collection

• Simplicity, Honesty, Truth• Emphasizing wood grain

Mission Media Cabinet, Walnut, Target, Assembly Required, $159.99

22ÉDOUARD MANET, Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863.

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Manet Transition to Impressionism

Impressionists more interested in fleeting nature of reality