April Davidson
Mini-Lesson Summary: Impressionist Art
Slide 1:
Quote from Jules-Antoine Castagnary (www.artchive.com/galleries/1874/74cmt098.htm)
Impressionist Art movement began in roughly 1869. 1st show was in 1874 (Salon refused to show their work, so they displayed their own work in a photographer’s studio; 1910 first show for Post-Impressionism. This was a short-lived art movement.
Impressionism came out of Realism. Impressionist tried to paint more real, but nothing can be real (the moment is fleeting) and so Impressionist Art are depictions of what is perceived as real in a single moment of time. Once that time is gone, so is the reality of that moment (Castaneda, Davidson).
Slide 2:
The term “Impressionist” was coined in 1874 by Louis Leroy, a journalist, to poke fun at the new techniques/art expressions (Denvir pg 88). “I was certain of it! I was just telling myself that since I was impressed there had to be some impressions in it . . . And what freedom; what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape!” This sarcastic, biting remark was aimed at Monet’s Impression: Sunset.
Slide 3:
www.impressionism.org
Computer tour of The Salon
(What was the Salon? What made it so important?)
Why did the Impressionist need to have their own showing?
What made Impressionist Art so different than the art of that time?
Slide 4:
Quote by Monet, in response to criticism (Found in Essays at end of HoD, pg 312). Monet disliked critics, he was his own harshest critic.
Symbols of perception: haze, mist, fog. What do we actually know? What is perceived? Are our perceptions always correct?
Truth is hazy.
Conrad uses fog in HoD to describe Africa: unknown elements, unknown customs – colonizing: trying to change the lives of “others” without KNOWING their lives.
Pg 41 “When the sun rose, there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more blinding than the night.” (White MORE blinding than Dark).
Conrad’s style: wrote what was happening around the characters, letting the environment interact. “I don’t know how it struck the others; to me it seemed as though the mist itself had screamed. . .” Marlow doesn’t allow his perception to interfere on others. Taking it as HE perceives it.
Impressionist Artist strived to achieve similar affects: Paintings to represent a moment in time. “But the more immediate and realistic they tried to paint, the more abstract their paintings would become.” (Davidson)
Slide 5:
“In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas, sharply peaked with gleams of vanishing spirits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condenced into a mournful gloom…” (Conrad 7)
Slide 6:
“Conrad is anxious to recreate those rather rare moments when we perceive something that is either genuinely outside the usual nets and must subsequently be contained . . . or when we perceive something that only appears to be pristine in this way.” “. . . Perception usually depends on the preconceptions.” (352).
Such as pg 45 “Sticks, little sticks were flying about.” Had no preconceptions of what the sticks might be, so could not perceive them as “Arrows, by Jove!” until understood them as arrows.
Impressionists wanted to capture those moments of perception through their art. “They wanted to be the first realists, but became subjectivists” (Castaneda). The perception of one individual is different than the perception of another.
Slide 7:
Connections between people and nature (Romantic)
Impressionists went outside, to paint their subjects in their real life. Nature, atmosphere, wind, etc. was just as big a part of the paintings as the people were (Castaneda).
Slide 8:
Romantic theme: tortured genius saved through expression of own art
See Cecily Gordon’s Romantic Music presentation
http://www.class.uidaho.edu/engl_258/SML/Romantic%20Music.htm
Show page 59 in book “Monet.” Monet after surgery, and his special glasses.
Monet tortured by what he sees: handout, typed from Monet: A Retrospective (pg 350-351)
Slide 9:
Impressionism looks at the subject, looks at how the light reacts with the subject, how the air reacts with the subject, and paints those reactions. Not painting what is seen until after it has been processed.
Reflections will be different for each person, based on their knowledge and experience
Slide 10:
Image from History of Italian Renaissance pg 614
Renoir once said: “The simplest subjects are eternal. A nude woman getting out of the briny deep or out of bed, whether she is called Venus or Nini, one can invent nothing better” (Denvir 225).
Cezanne: call back to the classical nude (pg 58 of Impressionism) (show on Elmo). Used a “woman of easy virtue” as model, same as classical time. Only Cezanne didn’t hide her profession. Most shocking was her matter-of-fact expression, looking straight at the viewer. Notice, in Titian’s Venus of Urbino, woman is looking down with a bashful, innocent, almost naïve expression. Cezanne borrowed and adapted his composition directly from “the most respectable sources” such as Titian (ti-shin) (Thomson 59).
Slide 11:
Everyday women. Doing everyday activities: bathing, brushing hair, cleaning, picnicking…only nude. (Degas pg 32 Women drying hair, cleaning tub); Chronicles of Impressionism pg 27 (Dejeuner Su L’Herbe – nude picnickers); Cezanne pg 26-27
Quote by Theophile Thore (Denvir 27).
Slide 12:
Caillebotte (pg 37) “A Balcony on the Boulevard Haussmann.” Brushstrokes: leaves, shadows. (Everyday men, standing around, casual positions)
Slide 13:
Enlightenment technology: could take exact pictures in less time than it took to paint or sketch. Photography creates snapshots of real time.
Manet used a photograph for many portraits. Live subjects move, pictures will stay still.
“Those first paintings after the invention of photography had to be about color, since that was the only known advantage painting had over the photograph at that time” (Davidson).
Denvir pg 160: Different views, perspectives, and images could be created with photography that weren’t possible prior. “It caught people in the act” better than even the fastest sketch.
Works Cited
Berhaut, Marie. Caillebotte: The Impressionist. Lausanne: International Art Book, 1968.
Castaneda, Ivan. Modern Art and Theory Lecture. University of Idaho, Moscow, ID. Mar. 2007.
Davidson, Thomas A. Explorations of Line, Shape, and Color: A Thesis. 27 Feb. 2008.
Denvir, Bernard. The Chronicle of Impressionism: A Timeline History of Impressionist Art.
Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1993.
Hartt, Frederick and David G. Wilkins. History of the Italian Renaissance Art. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall, 2007.
Leclerc, Andre. Cezanne. New York: Hyperion Press, 1948.
Stucky, Charles F., ed. Monet: A Retrospective. New York: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, 1985.
Thomson, Belinda. Impressionism: Origins, Practice, Reception. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
Welton, Jude. Monet. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 1992.
Zeri, Federico, ed. Degas: The Dance Class. Ontario: NDE Publishing, 2001.
Online Resources for Impressionist Art
www.abcgallery.com/movemind.html#Impressionism
www.artcyclopedia.com/history/impressionism.html
www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/theme/impressionnisme.html
www.metmuseum.org/toah/hi/hi_impressionism.htm
Various paintings also found with image searches through www.yahoo.com and www.google.com using the artists’ names.
Possible Exam Questions:
1. How is fog or haze significant in Impressionist Art? How does it compare with Conrad’s fog in Heart of Darkness?
2. Discuss the differences between Impressionist Art and the acceptable art of that time.