3.2 Backlash Against the Bourgeoisie: Realism, Factory Production, Rural Disruption, Urban Growth and Poverty, Marxism Flashcards
Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857 Realism
- depicts hardworking, earnest people in ordinary surroundings, engaged in everyday activities
- idealized in their rural setting,
- robust figures more aesthetically and softly rendered, using muted colors and no hard lines.
- foreground figures are softly depicted, despite the harshness of work. Women are robust, not in rags, rendered beautifully.
- Millet makes their plight more palatable to the art viewer in the Paris salon.
Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849, oil on canvas, Realism
respect for ordinary people.
painted in a size historically reserved for heroic subjects and powerful people.
Attends equally to parts of the painting, equally to rocks, faces, hands
Honore Daumier, Third Class Carriage, 1865 Realism, oil on canvas
Wealthy in top hats, peasants in foreground.
France politically unstable, great inequality among classes. Daumier interested in exposing this.
Lewis Hine, Child Labor (1912) Realism
In industrial rev, childen exploited as workers b/c small, nimble, expendable.
Hine interested in social reform; his photos brought before congress sparking child labor reform.
Realism
- based on the idea that art should reflect the lives of ordinary people, including those in the lowest social level.
- tended to get bad reviews from critics, who regarded their subject matter as unstuitable for serious art.
- political context: 1848 revolutions in France, when July Monarchy was overthrown by socialists, anarchists and workers.
- Courbet’s The Stone Breakers (1849) is illustrative.
- also a reaction to the artificiality and melodrama of Romanticism.
Arts and Crafts Movement
- late 19th C movement inspired by William Morris
- emphasized hand-crafting, use of local materials, simplicity, and utility.
- Morris:
- opposed both the Victorian design aesthetic and the deleterious effects of industrial mass production on workers and the culture as a whole
- believed that the process of traditional hand-crafting gave workers joy and satisfaction that translated into an honest beauty that could not be found in machine-made things.
- Morris’ Red House (1859-60) is an example of the Arts and Crafts style.
Karl Marx/Marxism
- creator of Marxism, which held that society was embroiled in a class struggle between the wealthy owning class and the exploited laboring class
- With Engels, published the Communist Manifesto, a galvanizeing text for social reform movements during the industrial revolution.
Lithography
- Invented in the early 19th C,
- a print-making process in which an artist draws or paints on a flat surface – typically a stone – with a greasy substance called tusche. The stone is wetted and then wiped with ink, which clings to the greasy areas, but not to the wet areas. A paper is then laid down on the stone and run through a press.
- Daumier was one of the first fine artists to appreciate the medium. His Gargantua (1831) is illustrative.
How did the Industrial Revolution affect cultures in both positive and negative ways? How are these changes reflected in the arts?
The Industrial Revolution replaced the land-based power of the aristocracy with the financial power of capitalists, who were able to use new sources of energy to mechanize manufacturing and greatly increase the quantity and profitability of saleable goods.
This not only gave rise to a poor urban class of factory workers, but produced a large middle class that both bought and sold the new goods made in factories.
A major reflection of this change to the arts is in the realist movement.
Describe the formal (stylistic elements) common to most Realist paintings as seen in the work of Millet and Courbet.
Courbet’s painting, The Stone Breakers attests to his respect for ordinary people.
Up to this point, this size was reserved for heroic subjects and powerful people.
Attends equally to parts of the painting, equally to rocks, faces, hands
Departs from standards of composition: in Burial at Ornans, figures are democratically lined up across the picture place, rather than arranged into a pyramid denoting a hierarchy of importance.Critics object to his ordinary treatment of death, without any reference to the afterlife.
Millet also depicts hardworking, earnest people in ordinary surroundings, engaged in everyday activities, but they are more idealized in their rural setting, their robust figures more aesthetically and softly rendered, using muted colors and no hard lines. In The Gleaners, the foreground gigures are softly depicted, despite the harshness of work. Women are robust, not in rags, rendered beautifully. Millet makes their plight more palatable to the art viewer in the Paris salon.
How is the Arts and Crafts movement a reaction to the industrial revolution and industrial design?
A & C was reaction to the oeverelaborated victorian aesthetic popularized by the furniture making innovations of the machine age. Instead of the leggy, spindly, airy quality, a & c tried to make furniture more :
- local materials
- simple, sturdy, reflective of natural world
- utility: emphasis on function and appropriateness, as opposed to victorian excess and decoration
- satisfaction of hand - crafting gave honest beauty to the work
