Impressionism

• Rejecting Renaissance perspective, balanced composition, idealized figures, and chiaroscuro.

• Represented immediate visual sensations through colour and light

• Impressionist’s main goal was to present an “impression,” or the initial sensory perceptions

Blast from the past… Impressionism cont.

Star performer…Manet

“Bar at the Folies-Bergère”, 1882

Subjects: Updated Old Masters themes, painted contemporary scenes with hard edges

Colours:

Dark Patches against light, used black as accent; early work: somber, late work: colourful

Style:

Simplified forms with minimal modeling, flat colour patches outlined in black

Advice:Manet says he “simply seeks to be himself and no one else”

Blast from the past… Impressionism cont.

Star performer…Monet

“Rouen Cathedral”, 1892-94

Subjects: Landscapes, waterfront scenes, series on field of poppies, cliffs, haystacks, poplars, rouen Cathedral; late work: near abstract water lilies

Colours:

Sunny hues, pure primary colours dabbed side by side (shadows were complementary colours dabbed side by side)

Style:

Dissolved form of subject into light and atmosphere, soft-edges, classic Impressionist look

Advice:“Try to forget what object you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever, Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you”

Blast from the past… Impressionism cont.

Star performer…Renoir

“Le Moulin de la Galette”, 1876

Subjects: Voluptuous, peach-skinned female nudes, café society, children, flowers

Colours:

Rich reds, primary colours, detested use of black- used blue instead

Style:

Early: quick brushstrakes, blurred figures blended into hazy background; Late: more Classical style, solidly formed nudes

Advice:“Paint with joy, with the same joy that you would make love to a woman”

Blast from the past… Impressionism cont.

Star performer…Degas

“Prima Ballerina”, 1876

Subjects:

Pastel portraits of human figures in stop-action pose: ballerinas, horse races, café society, laundresses, circus; late work: nudes bathing

Colours:

Gaudy hues side by side for vibrancy; early: soft pastel; late: broad smears of acid-coloured pastels

Style:

Offbeat angles with figures cropped at edge of the canvas, asymmetrical composition with void at center

Advice:“Even when working from nature, one has to compose.”

Post-Impressionism

1880-1905

Concentration on formal, near-scientific design /

Emphasized expressing emotions and sensations through light and colour

Post Impressionism

• French art movement 1880-1905

• Included French artists Seurat, Gauguin, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and the Dutchman (working in France) van Gogh.

• Styles were derived from the breakthroughs that the Impressionist made– USE OF BRIGHT COLOURS– UNDERSTANDING OF LIGHT– PLAY WITH PERSPECTIVE

• Post Impressionists want art to be valued as art not merely a way of capturing a moment in time

• 2 idea of how to create this substance in art were created

1. Concentrated on formal, near scientific design– Seurat: dot theory– Cézanne: colour planes

2. Emphasized emotions and sensations through colour and light– Gauguin, van Gogh and Lautrec

• Cubism and Surrealism developed from these ideas

Georges Seurat

• 1859-91 (died at 31)• Responsible for Pointillism

– Consisted of applying dots of pure colour, unmixed, over the whole canvas. These dots would mix in the viewers eye to create the image

– The effect created a grainy quality without defined hard edges

• Pointillism was so time consuming that Seurat only finished 7 large paintings in 10 years

Seurat, “A Sunday on La Grange Jatte” 1884-86

•2 years and 40 preliminary colour studies later…

•Kept bright, unmixed colours of the impressionists and open-air themes

•Created image based on geometric design and rigorous calculation of pattern

Seurat, “Le Cirque” 1891

Method Painting:

•Assigned certain emotions to different colours and shapes to elicit predictable response from the viewer

•Warm colours/ upward line = action / merriment

•Dark, cool colours/ descending lines = sadness

•Mixing warm and cool colours/ vertical lines = calm

Paul Cézanne

• 1839-1906• Started exhibiting with the Impressionist but out

grew the style and enjoyed working alone• Became known as a recluse after showing his

work in 1874 and being openly ridiculed as a fraud. When he emerged again in 1895 the younger artists praised his innovations in colour planes

• Colour planes: approaching everything as though they are geometric shapes and colouring them one colour

Cézanne, “Mont Sainte-Victoire” 1902-04

•Painted more than 30 versions of this landscape

•Divided areas into colour planes

•Used play of cool colours receding and warm colours advancing to create the illusion of depth

Cézanne, “Still Life with Apples and Oranges” 1895-1900

•Used contrasting colours/ complementary colours to make each fruit stand out from the others

•Used wax fruit as models, as the real fruit rotted to fast for the number of times Cézanne would compulsively repaint his subjects

Cézanne, “Large Bathers” 1906

•His last years he was obsessed with theme of nude bathers in an outdoor setting but broke from his traditional approach to painting.

•He painted indoors looking at reproductions of painting by Rubens and El Greco as he was too shy to paint live models and feared his prudish neighbours’ suspicions

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

• 1864-1901

• Childhood injury caused his legs not to fully grow

• Disassociated himself from high society due to his deformity (his family had a 1000 year history as the Counts of Toulouse)

• Elevated lithographs and poster art to recognized art forms instead of media messaging tools

• Similar style to Degas (Impressionist)• Subject matter:

– figures in interior night scenes lit randomly by artificial light

– Caricatured actors, entertainers, acrobats, and prostitutes to highlight certain characteristics

– Caricatured self-portraits (very bitter and self loathing)

Toulouse-Lautrec, “At the Moulin Rouge” 1892

•Seen from elbow height (makes viewer part of crowd)

•Harsh lighting and use of colours shows the era’s surface merriment and the underlying melancholy

•Painted in the music hall

•Put himself in the painting (shorter bearded figure in middle ground)

Paul Gauguin

• 1848-1903

• Was an average businessman with a family of 5 when he started painting on Sundays and had his first show in 1873 of very traditional imagery and style

• By 1883 he had abandoned his family for his art and adapted a new style he called “savage instinct”

• Driven by a desire for the unknown

• Saw art as “an abstraction” of the reality we live in

• Eventually he sought a more pure sensation untainted by “sick civilization

• Moved to the South Seas where he lived in a native hut with a 13 year old mistress, painting very symbolic images with vivid hues, as well as wood sculptures and woodcuts

Gauguin, “Vision after the Sermon, or Jacob Wrestling with an Angel,” 1888

Gauguin followed his own advice, “Don’t copy too much from nature. Art is an abstraction.” He stylized the Breton women witnessing a supernatural vision to make them symbols of faith. He painted the ground red, separating the “real” world of the women in the foreground from the “imaginary” world of Jacob wrestling with the angel by the diagonal tree painted blue.

Gauguin, “la Orana Maria” 1892

• Used flat planes, abstracted figures, and bright colours

•“la Orana Maria” is native dialect for “I hail thee, Mary”

•Gauguin said this was a greeting from the angel to Mary and Jesus and everything else was recast in the Tahitian terms. The composition he credits as an adaptation from Javanese bas-relief

Vincent van Gogh• 1853-1890• Didn’t start painting as an artist until he was 27• His brother Theo realized Vincent would never

have a normal job and that painting made him happy, so he financially support his work.

• Friends with Gauguin and convinced him to come to the South of France to work with him

• Worked with Gauguin for 2 month, had an argument over a portrait Gauguin had done of him, and cut off his left ear– Stories say he gave it to a prostitute to give to Gauguin– Gauguin left on the first train the next day but the kept in

touch through letters

• Did many of his painting while admitted to Saint-Rémy asylum

• When he painted he often did not break to eat, sometimes several days in a row

• In his last 70 day alive he painted 70 canvases• Was often depressed at the lack of prospects

and his dependence on his brother financially• Ended his own life after receiving a letter from

his brother saying he was worried about money– Shot himself in a field after writing his brother saying

“What’s the use?”– Last words he uttered “Who would believe that life

could be so sad?”– Died 2 days later

Vincent Van Gogh

Starry Night, 1889

Self Portrait, 1889

• Starry Night was painted while van Gogh was a patient at Saint-Rémy

•Truly disliked realism and based his whole approach on unorthodox colour to show a fiery temperament