French Realism Flashcards
1
Q
realism
A
- naturalism
- telling the truth
- closer to life
- not idealized
- not distorted
- not generalized
- not abstracted
2
Q
Legacy of the enlightenment - the scientific attitude
A
- 19c. century of science and progress, dominated by empirical approach to nature and society
- realists - focused on real and visible experience from everyday contemporary life , disapproved historical and fictional subjects
- condemned neoclassicism and romanticism
3
Q
Reflection on the function of art (a bit of background as well) (french realism)
A
- realistic art - reflects and criticizes the reality of the society
- rapid industrialization caused people to leave their rural home and became urban poor
— nostalgia for the pastoral and idyllic life
— subjects deemed unworthy of depiction in the mainstream - mundane and trivial workers and peasants - depicted on monumental scale with earnestness and seriousness - under the influence of Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” of 1848
— discloses social injustices and gives realism a socio-political sense
— social realism of 1920s and 1930s
4
Q
School of Barbizon (artists)
A
- French Realists
- Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
- Theodore Rousseau
- Jean Francois Millet
4
Q
School of Barbizon
A
- French Realists (not in barbizon)
— Gustave Courbet
— Honore Daumier - Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
- Theodore Rousseau
- Jean Francois Millet
5
Q
Gustave Courbet
A
- leading figure of the Realist movement: painting is a “concrete art”
- works (real allegory and burial at ornans) rejected by the Parisian Academic jury of 1855 salon - subjects and figures are too coarse and too large
- withdrew all his submissions and held a private exhibition in a place he called “Pavilion of Realism”
- rebellious again the official body - the first artist to stage a private exhibition of his own work
- realism - creation of a living art, and its function - exploration of truth
6
Q
Gustave Courbet - Painter’s studio: real allegory of summing up seven years of My Artistic life
A
- A manifesto of “realism” his ambitions and experience from everyday life in 7 years all represented here - composed like a triptych
- portraiture and genre painting based on real experience - no less trivial than history painting
- in huge size, a serious subject for the painter
- details
— left: people he met in those years
— right: the painter’s friends, patrons, and supporters, among them - Charles Baudelaire
— working as a painter of reality through the naive eyes of a child
— distaste for classical art - ignores the male nude behind his painting and female nude by his side
7
Q
Gustave Courbet - Burial at Ornans
A
- inspired by the funerary ceremony of his grandfather - captured the unedited truth like a photograph; more than 50 real people of his hometown were represented with verisimilitude
- recalls Dutch Baroque group portraits - lively representation of human beings in their activities
- anti-traditional attitude -> democratisation of art, art serves the common people
- 4 pallbearers follow the priest - distracted look
- 2 clergymen in red gown - ugly, fat and drunkard
- no idealization - an offense to the church
- real people - the mayor, the veterans, the clergy, the painter’s mother and 3 sisters
8
Q
Gustave Courbet - Stonebreakers
A
- inspired by Jean Francois Millet’s winnower, about life-long hardship of lower class workers
9
Q
Gustave Courbet - Young ladies on the Banks of the Seine (summer)
A
- socalled “eminent horizontal females” - forbidden subject of the society
10
Q
Honore Daumier
A
- specialized in lithography - prints with large circulation
- worked mainly as a caricaturist, created illustrations for books and newspapers
- imprisoned in 1832 for having created documentary works to criticize the conservative rule of King Louis-Philippe
- turned to oil painting and sculpture in 18402
- satirical towards unjust social and political reality
11
Q
Honore Daumier - Rue Transnonian
A
- used art as a voice of political protest against violation of rights of common people
- repression of a workers’ revolt in Lyon sparked unrest in Paris; a man shot from No.12 Rue Transnonain and killed an officer; soldiers forced into building and killed innocent residents
- 3 generations of victims lying on the floor
— mother, father, grandfather and child
— father - like christ the martyr in white shroud - piety for the working class
12
Q
Honore Daumier - Penelope’s nights
A
- Penelope, wife of Odysseus in greek myth
- praised for her chastity - turned away suitors by weaving and undoing the same burial shroud every night for 3 years
- a sarcasm on high, official culture, which clings to the heritage of Western civilization
- witty graffiti of an ancient soldier
- exhausted working-class woman
- forced the public to confront the problem of poverty of the working class in contemporary urban society
13
Q
Honore Daumier - Third class carriage
A
- poor, tired people commuting daily from their workplace and home outside the city
- railway - symbol of the triumph of technology or social injustice?
- in 1850s, the Haussmann renovation project tore down parisian medieval dwellings to create boulevards and new apartment, poor people could not afford and were forced to move to the periphery
- a fatherless family with 3 generations
14
Q
School of Barbizon background and characteristics
A
- Barbizon - a village at the western edge of the forest of fontainebleau outside paris
- since mid 1830s, an artists’ colony was established there for its beautiful natural landscape
- did direct, life study of nature - not studio training
- a truthful but also subjective reflection of nature
- some were painters and farmers at the same time