Ch.17 - French Avant-garde Art in the 1880s Flashcards
A Sunday at la Grande Jatte, 1884-86
Georges Seurat
This piece may look like regular Impressionist painting, but it is MASSIVE. Keep in mind, most impressionist paintings were done outside/ in person.
Aside from the size, this piece also differed from many impressionist paintings because it shows the juxtaposition of different social classes. Figures are also stiff, aloof, almost frozen, as opposed to being animated like so many other impressionist figures.
A favorite haunt of the wealthy middle-class. Seurat did dozens of studies of how to paint this place. He used several techniques over time.
A perfect balance is created by this piece. All the figures are in full sight with none being partially exposed.
He was deeply enrooted in tradition of creating a monumental piece using color as his basis.
His technique’s something called “Pointillism” which is tiny dots of pure color. The way to think of it is threads of a tapestry. The colors would come together in a fusion that would produce new tones that couldn’t be made from mixing on a pallet.
The effect is that figures show a greater sense of permanence. A totally different effect than what the Impressionists provided
A modern image of suburban recreation and leisure, but also a critique. Seurat was a socialist, and he was critical of the alienation and the artifice of the modern middle-class society. He hoped for creation for a classless society. He was against hierarchies!
This was a commentary on what industrialization had done to people, making them seem like robots with little interaction, soulless, empty figures.
He references the hypocrisy by showing the woman with a monkey and a dog. The monkey symbolizes evolution and Darwinism, in that the woman is a further evolved form of the monkey.
Gasholders at Clichy, 1886
Paul Signac
Rustic gas tanks. Very industrial and lower-class area. Not the prettiest sight to look at. Gas used to supply Parisian gaslights. Not somewhere you would see people living. Very industrial setting
Celebrates the workers. Colours are very celebratory
Signac was a socialist, and even an anarchist
He used his work to depict his social standpoint, and desire for classlessness
The Tub, 1886
Edgar Degas
He created the “bathers” theme. Close up views of women engaged in the act of bathing.
These were done in pastel. Representative of private moments.
Formally Degas was experimenting with new special arrangement. Influenced by Japanese prints. Angled viewpoints, conventional perspectives.
He does a series of these where the viewer is brought into close proximity of a woman bathing. You can never see the woman’s face, however
Emphasis is on the women’s form, and the lighting on them.
Paris water system was full of pollution and disease in this time. It was seen as lower-class to bathe. Prostitutes had to bathe by law to protect their clients.
People concluded that these women are prostitutes based on this.
Private realm of the prostitute. Degas was not a Flaneur, he was giving a view of the women, while they were unaware that they were being viewed or watched.
Detached sense of observation. Our gaze has power
Plate of Apples, 1877
Paul Cezanne
Like Seurat, Cezanne tried to give his subjects a sense of timelessness and permanence
He was born in the country, moved to Paris, but was unenthusiastic about city life, and later moved back to Aix-en-Provence when he was older.
Famous quote “With an apple, I will astonish Paris” – Paul Cezanne
He wanted to do a Poussin structure, which was classical in theme, with nature instead.
Impressionists use color to define their forms.
He reinvents what traditionally has been used to make sense of three-dimensionality.
He believed that warm colors advance towards the viewer, while cool colors recede from the viewer.
He doesn’t care about having a single vantage point. The “aesthetic integrity” of his canvas was important to him.
He wanted his canvas to be a pleasing configuration of shape, line, and color. If you look at the shape of the table, it’s not really even, which is a big leap to make as an artist.
Multiple viewpoints given to single objects in a single piece. Using a 2d surface to present objects from multiple angles. Far from the typical academic mode.
Cezanne worked with the idea of structure, viewpoint, and manipulation of cool and warm colors.
Multiple viewpoints which are inconsistent with reality. Especially with showing flat surfaces, like houses, tables, large objects. He replicates the experience of how we see things when we move around them.
Night Café, 1888
Vincent van Gogh
Exaggerated and “untrue” colours. The bartenders hair is green.
These are people you would see very late at night.
Drunks, prostitutes, etc. Van Gogh hated it, and found it depressing. He painted it to look the way he felt about it.
The bright red against green and yellow.
Innkeeper is this scary looking guy in a pale outfit, weird aura around him. Black jagged outlines.
Pool table is in a neat perspective. Vincent is at this place often, but he doesn’t paint what he sees, he paints what he feels, by using color!
Saw café as a place where someone can ruin themselves, or commit crime
Starry Night, 1889
Vincent van Gogh
After getting his ear cut off, things change for him. Admitted to hospital, where he painted his famous sunflowers.
They let him leave his hospital room and paint in a studio room, also in the hospital. This was the beginning of his therapy.
“Mistral” wind in France comes from the Alps and is extremely strong. Van Gogh’s painting of outside his studio window may show this kind of weather, although it could be confused with his diffused perception of what he is looking at.
He had planned on doing this piece for a very long time. Supposed to be painted from his asylum window. When you look at an actual picture of what is out his window, there is no town, no church! This place which he depicted doesn’t actually exist. Cyprus trees are a symbol of death, but also growth. The tree is reaching into the stars as a vehicle to this intense and spiritual realm. Don’t forget that Van Gogh wanted to be a minister.
It’s a personal depiction of the intensity of the universe. The stars were supposed to be very bright on the night he did this.
The church depicted is not French, but Dutch.
His brother got concerned about his state and brought him to a town outside of Paris for psychiatric help. Vincent seemed to be doing okay, until he was found in a wheat field with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his stomach. He died very slowly, took three days.
