Name: Jeffrey Shih

Ms. Dunkel
Class: Bicycle
Date: 12/23/10

HW#50: 19th, 20th century Art

Homework #50: Art
Read p. 875-882, 888-896 in Modern Europe.
Sorry, I know it is a little long but there are so many pictures (that would look so much better in color)
that take up some of the space. Look them up on line, if you wish.

P. 875-882

Cultural Ferment

- Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) spurred lasting hatred in Europe along with other short wars
- advances in science and technology changed lifestyles
- standard of living generally rose
- shorter working ours for employees -> more leisure time
- realism - affected scientific and social change in 1850s-60s
- last decade of 19th century marked by:
- technological advances
- large-scale industrialization
- emergence of a more urban world (due to conservative dimensions conflicting with new remarkable
artistic achievements
- turning away from rationalism, materialism, positivism
- Henri Bergson (1859-1941) - philosophy of irrationality
- “dynamic energy” or vital force (élan vital) to be released in each
individual/nation
- avant-garde - describes people who considered themselves in the forefront of artistic expression and
achievement (name taken from military tactics)
- modernists who insisted on irrationality of human nature, turned against old rationality
- led to uncertainty and rebellion

Realism

- Jules Verne (1828-1905) - popular French author, wrote sci-fi fantasies

- Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) was a bestseller
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - in Britain, created first true scientific detective Sherlock Holmes
- Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) - poet of modern life, crucial figure in emergence of modern culture
- Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857) -> much anger
- art: product of the link between individual artist and contemporary society
- fined in 1857 for “obscene and immoral passages”
- died of syphilis in 1867
- dandy and flâneur (observer of modern urban life)
- responded to modern urban life, rebelled against conservatives
- urban modernity -> democratization of politics and culture
Name: Jeffrey Shih
Ms. Dunkel
Class: Bicycle
Date: 12/23/10

- Barbizon painters - village southeast of Paris

- painted peasants, harvests, animals, aspects of village life in 1850s
- contradicted accepted painting styles like romanticism
- middle class viewers believed peasants were unworthy to be painted
- Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875) - painted peasants in The Gleaners (1857) and The
Angelus (1859)
- provided sense of dignity to peasants

- photography - developed in 1840s

- provided vivid sense of actuality
- Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) - abandoned idealization of painting
- used ordinary workers as subjects, such as in The Stonebreakers (1849)
- indifferent, bored expression of family in Burial at Ornans (1849)
- nudity of ordinary-looking woman bothered many viewers in The Bather
(1853)
- Napoleon III responded negatively to Courbet, who portrayed the ruler as a
shabby poacher (LOL STRIKE ONE WITH THE RIDING-CROP ;D)
- Courbet wanted to simultaneously be successful and pursue his realist goals
- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) - novelist who was charged for obscenity
- Madame Bovary (1857) described affair of a bourgeois housewife
- described bohemian underside of bourgeois life
- Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) - Norwegian playwright, associated realism with woman’s lives
- described realistic psychology and interactions between characters in dramas such
as Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler
- recurrent themes of guilt and hypocrisy
- Émile Zola (1840-1902) - evocation of working-class life
- described mine shaft work in northern France in his novel Germinal (1885)
- Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-1892) - historian who considered himself an advocate of “progressive ideas,”
especially faith in science
- Life of Jesus (1863) was a controversial, best-selling work that offended
the Catholic Church by presenting Christ in a historical way (i.e.
Scriptures were to be studied by any other historical document)

Impressionism

- impressionism - developed during French Second Empire

- rejected artistic traditions concerned with religion, history, and formality
- depicted rural and urban landscapes, individual figures integrated into everyday scenes
- very subjective movement
- focused on direct observation of nature and its effects
- impressionists painted what they saw initially
- paintings reflected interest in science, particularly in lighting effects
Name: Jeffrey Shih
Ms. Dunkel
Class: Bicycle
Date: 12/23/10

- Édouard Manet (1832-1883) - dandy and flâneur, hoped to create an art “born of today”
- Olympia (1863) led to anger from for portraying the study of a nude, even from
Empress Eugénie (LOL STRIKE TWO WITH THE FAN)
- Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863) portrayed nude female with upper class males,
challenged hierarchy of subjects established by classicism
- painted Gare Saint-Lazare with Monet
- Bar at the Folies-Bergére (1882) showed a barmaid that could be viewed as
simply serving drinks to earn a living or intimately interacting with
customers
- Claude Monet (1840-1926) - painted based on random colors and shapes, not on identity of surrounding objects
- showed ambivalence toward large-scale industry
- painted of Argenteuil (Paris suburb) while living there in the 1870s, reflecting a
balance between leisure and industry
- eventually grew tired of urban life and moved to the village of Giverny, where he
painted an ideal rural setting provided by his garden, pond, and lily pads (NEVER
THE RAILROAD TRACKS ;D)
- Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) - Manet’s sister-in-law, placed female subjects in various sceneries
- Camille Pissarro - painted subjects in great boulevards of Paris, depicting modern life
- Edgar Degas (1834-1917) - observed leisure of wealthy Parisians in a variety of backgrounds
- frequently chose wealthy woman as subjects, gentlemen more in shadows
- forced to sell off favorite paintings due to economic depressopm
- At the Stock Exchange (1879) presented dark stereotypes of Parisians
- L’Absinthe (1876-1877) portrayed anonymity of Paris (a frequent theme of
impressionism), showing two disconnected figures in a café
- large canvases began to be used for impressionist paintings rather than historical themes
- impressionist movement was originally subjected to much objection; the Salon did not accept many
impressionist paintings, including Manet’s
- the emperor finally allowed some paintings to pass through due to complaints
- “Salon of the Refused” includes works by Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne
- aroused criticism as well as freedom of mind

P. 888-897

Artists and the Rapid Pace of Modern Life

- Paris Exhibition of 1900 celebrated dawn of a new century

- The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame --> the motor car threatens stability
- Émile Zola --> “modern society is racked without end by a nervous irritability. We are sick and tired of
progress, industry, and science.”
- Last ten years of French impressionist painter and anarchist Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) reflected
growing preoccupation with rapid transformation of modern life --> took up urban subjects in paintings
- Other painters also presented urban scenes in harsh, jarring light suggestive of chaos
Name: Jeffrey Shih
Ms. Dunkel
Class: Bicycle
Date: 12/23/10

Artists’ Response to Popular Culture and Mass Production

- Avant-garde writers and artists loathed the culture of the public

- Popular culture seemed to be eroding ability of high culture to survive mass manufacturing and growing
cities
- Sharp reactions against seeming uniformity of the machine age permeated the arts
- William Morris (1834-1896) --> English craftsman and designer --> mass production eliminated the
aesthetic control craftsman had over production; capitalism was “defilement”; only transformation of
society could save working class and only revolution in aesthetics could save art and architecture
- Symbolism --> began as literary movement in 1870s --> reflected discontent of writers with materialism
of industrial age --> wanted to discover and aesthetically depict reality of human consciousness and
identity through literature, especially poetry; sought to depict emotions, so some continuity between
romanticism

The Avant-Garde’s Break with Rationalism

- May 1913 --> Sergey Diaghilev’s The Rite of Spring opens, with music by composer Igor Stravinsky -->
Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet Company helped revitalize ballet --> that night, Parisian high society who saw
the play were outraged; the avant-garde, however, cheered --> for them, art and life had merged
- Avant-garde rebelled against accepted cultural forms by rejecting the idea that rationalism should underlie
the arts; accepted cultural forms rendered individual insignificant and powerless
- They accepted nothing as absolute
- Influenced by Nietzsche --> sought to transcend limits of reason and moral purpose
- Broke with past
- Revolt of the young; in Austria, called themselves “The Young Ones”; were “modern”
- French playwright Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) staged King Ubu, a mockery of an authority figure
- Avant-garde did not write or paint for everybody
- In Paris group of artists and writers called the “Bohemians” were gypsy wanderers --> glorified in being
outsiders, rebels against dominant culture
- Rebelled against strictures of middle class social origins
- Wanted to surprise with their spontaneity and creativity, and even offend by creating a scandal
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) --> Irish born poet and dramatist --> dialogues improved British comedy,
became symbol of contemporary “decadence”; “it is personalities, not principles, that move the age”;
sentenced to two years hard labor for “immoral conduct”
- Proponents of cultural modernism mocked bourgeois “respectability” and popular culture, but at same
time sought public acceptance and patronage of their work
- Musical composition reflected contemporary discovery of the unconscious
- Avant-garde composers moved away from traditional forms
- Composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) --> sought to release dreams and fantasies in his audience
- French pianists and composers Erik Satie (1866-1925) and Claude Debussy (1862-1918) --> wanted to
free music from all constraints
- Satie’s compositions, including Three Pieces in the Form of Pear, explored new relationships between
chords; also sought popularity with his “furniture music” that he hoped would serve as a background for
daily life
- Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) --> broke patterns of traditional harmonies to write
free atonal music, beginning with his String Quartet No. 2 (1908)