Monday, September 10, 2018

Modern Art

19th Century

A lot of revolutions going on in the world end of 18th C. Think: Industrial Revolution,
American and French Revolutions (not in that order). Creates this shift, catalyst.
1850’s-1880’s some argue more when it began.

General:

- Modernity/Modern Art= state of being modern. Time when there is an awareness of

the chronology of art/art of previous areas.

- Modernism/Modernist art= deals with the present and has a critical function.
Involves a critical reflection on the premises of art itself and on aesthetics.

“the essence of modernism lies… in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to

criticize the discipline itself- not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in
its area of competence” Clement Greenberg.

- Modern art is period of self reflection, self actualization

- Individualism= Leonardo Da Vinci related the perfect male form to the perfect
geometry of the square and circle. “Man is the model of the world”.

- Humanism is key

- Relate back to Renaissance— some argue Renaissance is already modern art bc

humanism.

- Mona Lisa is an individual.

- Renaissance started tradition of portraiture.

- Alfred Barr, creator of MoMa. (made chart 1936).

- Diversity

The Beginnings:

- Paris = center of the art world.

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- Started with toppling of aristocracy and clergy— rising of middle classes, American/
french revolution.

- Industrial revolution

- Suddenly life has completely changed, products mass produced, more anonymity
shifts in the way people live.

- If you wanted to make it in art world, Paris.

- World War I and II also massively impactful.

- Artists fleeing, market falling apart.

- Art moved to New York City a bit with Europes destruction.

- Now, New York and Paris still important, China important, it’s all spread out now.

- Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris takes it out of the middle ages, tore the labyrinth
down and swapped it for big
boulevards.

A Few Terms:

- ‘en plein air’ painting - painting

outside not in the studio

- Avant garde - a head of the

times, (guards that went ahead)
unusual unorthodox.

- Royal Academy of Painting and

Sculpture

- Bourgeoisie

- WHAT DID THEY PAINT?

- Gustave Caillebotte, Paris: A Rainy Day 1877
- The Royal Academy

- They’d find commissions for you

- You couldn’t submit to the royal academy unless you went through these
processes

- Going to the museum and studying

- Emphasis on drawing, line drawing, Chiaro Scuro (light and dark)

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- Academy became very restrictive

- … shaking of of shackles only natural

- Society of Independent Artists/ Salon Des Refuses — in opposition of the

academy

- Made their own exhibitions

- Rent their own space

- Free themselves of restrictions

- Art Dealer and Critic came to be because of this need as artists grew apart from
academy.

- Hierarchy of genre

- Religion, Mythology, Landscapes, Scenes of Everyday Life… BORING

- Color only a means to an end, with the modernists color rises above line

- Modernists rise against these set topics

The Academy and the Salon System:

- Official art exhibition organized by the Academie des Beaux Arts in Paris

- The Hierarchy:

Some Artists and Works:

- Jacques- Louis David, Oath of Horatii, 1784.

- Upper class family had to deal with a squabble, bothers swearing that they will
take on their duty and take care of family/country. Moral value. Virtuous.
Righteous. Call to arms— pride in country. Patriotism. The way its painted, linear
perspective, clearly regimented sections.

- Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading The People, 1830

- Allegory for the people. Uprisal, upright against the authorities. Fight for freedom,
values of French revolution.

- Jean- Auguste- Dominique Ingres, Jupiter and Tethis, 1811.

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- Mythological.

- Adolphe-William-Bouguereau, Birth of Venus, 1879.

- Line based, very realistic subject.

- These things are in the basements of museums now. No one cares really anymore.

- Edouard Manet (modernist), Portrait of Emile Zola 1868.

- Everyday life. Zola was a writer who wrote a good article about him despite the
fact that he did not attend the academy, scholarly representation.

- Mary Cassatt, Young Mother Sewing, 1900.

- John Constable, They Haywain, 1821.

- Landscape, idyllic scenes in the country contrasting urbanization and companies

taking over lands.

- James Mallord William Turber, The Slave Ship, 1840.

- Abolitionist at a time when slave trade was economy . Color at forefront. Shape
based.

- Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, 1863

- Art exhibition a place of entertainment and exploration, no way people would have
seen what the west looks like unless it was painted.

MODERN ART VS. ACADEMIC ART

TRANSITORY VS ETERNAL

BREAK WITH PAST VS. CONTINUATION OF PAST

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Showing the same story, two different ways…

- On right: Manet, Execution of the Emperor Maximillion, 1867

-
vs.

- On left: Jean- Paul Laurens, 1882

- Same s

- “Someone has said somewhere that literature and the arts influence morals…
whoever he was, he was undoubtedly a great fool…” I’m paraphrasing. (look up
Theophile Gautier Preface of Mademoiselle de Maupin, 1835).

- ART FOR ARTS SAKE.

- James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket c. 1875.

- Critics called it a flung pot of paint.

- Not about moral values, no practical or ethical position.

- Nocturne- musical term.

- Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Paganini, 1819 vs. Eugene Delacroix, Paganini,
1831.

- Again emphasis in Delacroix’s on color, expression, Ingres on line.

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- Paganini is glowing coming out of the dark (kind of reminds me of Baroque light of
revelation).

- You can hear the music in Delacroix’s. He’s completely involved, he’s playing.
Ingres is posing, holding violin.

- The violinist is drawing it out of himself.

- creating something out of nothing

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