MODERNISM: IMPRESSIONISM, POST-IMPRESSIONISM, AND ART NOUVEAU

IN THE LAST CHAPTER WE DETERMINED…

Nature is:

Emotion and Imagination The physical environment The Self, the Soul

Nature is found: Color and loose brushwork—the visual arts Tonal Painting—the musical arts Landscapes (void of human dominion) In humanity and its exploration of soul

GUIDING QUESTION(S)

How should we respond to technology?

How do we define technology?

Should we embrace it or reject/escape it?

Gustave Eiffel, Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1889

The Baron Haussmann's transformations to Paris brought a real improvement to the quality of life in the capital. Disease epidemics (save tuberculosis) ceased, traffic circulation improved and new buildings were better-built and more functional than their predecessors.

REFLECTIONS OF THE AGE

SCIENCE

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in 1905 says Time and Space are NOT absolute, they change according to context

Thomson’s discovery of the electron in 1897

Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents

Elucidates that neuroses are inherent in culture. Human sexuality is cause of anxiety when hindered by social constructs.

LITERATURE/PHILOSOPHY

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House

Main character, Nora, leaves her husband and children to go find herself

From Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil

Outlines a morality that is not dependent on God, but rather on the individual

Authors redefine Nature, the Individual, Civilization, and Morality

GUIDING HISTORICAL EVENTS

The Belle époque

American Expansion creates is contact with non-western peoples, and ultimately creates a mythology of the primal, the “savage” untainted by technology

into California, Texas and New Mexico in the Mexican-American War of 1845-8

Hawaii in 1898

Puerto Rico and Cuba in 1898-9

Guam in 1898

PSYCHE AS TECHNOLOGY

Psyche is layered

ID

EGO

SUPEREGO

IMPRESSIONISM

An Interest in how light affects formsAn Interest in capturing moments

(which are fleeting) of industrialization and city life, so uses Open compositionsSerializationsSpontaneous Brushwork

RENOIR’S DANCE AT THE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE, 1876

Fleeting

moments caught

by “arbitrary”

compositions

Pedestrian

subjects—

common people

unidealized,

unposed

DEGAS’ THE DANCING

CLASS , CA. 1874

Does not eroticize ballet dancers

Interested in movement, the world in flux

MONET’S IMPRESSION: SUNRISE, 1872

Explores

effects of

light and

weather

Uses

abstraction

to escape

language

MONET’S SERIALIZATION OF ROUEN CATHEDRAL, ROUEN,

FRANCE

WHY SERIALIZE? BECAUSE THERE IS NO SINGLE TRUTH OF THE

ROUEN CATHEDRAL. THE TRUTH OF THE ARTIST’S PERCEPTION CHANGES ACCORDING TO TIME OF DAY,

WEATHER, LIGHT CONDITIONS.

DEBUSSEY’S CLAIRE DE LUNE (MOONLIGHT)

Captures a fleeting and changing moment in musical form

We hear this in music of the day, as well.

POST-IMPRESSIONISM

Interested in the vulnerability of art as an expression

Arbitrary coloring, often used to express emotion

Emphasis on complete subjectivity Based in the science of color and

sight

Will

embrace or

reject

technology

in different

ways

Embrace

Author as

God

SEURAT’S A SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON ISLAND JATTE, 1884-86

Vision of the Belle Epoque, as Seurat sees it

Painted within the context of the science of color

VAN GOGH’S STARRY NIGHT, 1889

Color and

line used

to express

emotion

JAPONISME

Van Gogh’s Flowering Plum Tree, 1887

Hiroshige, Plum Estate, 1857

Influence comes when US forcibly opens Japan to Western trade in 1853

Style is flat with asymmetrical Compositions and no shadows or dimension

ART NOUVEAU

Rejects urban revolution Industrial lines and shapes

will be more organic

HORTA’S STAIRCASE AT DR. TASSEL’S HOUSE, BRUSSELS, 1893

Plant life brought to industrial forms

Curvaceous rather than linear

GAUDI’S CASA MILA APARTMENT BUILDING, BARCELONA, 1905—07

Much of Gaudi’s work lacks any angularity or straight lines; Gaudi works largely for the upper classes of Barcelona society who seek to escape the “vulgar” urbanity of life

Gaudi’s Casa Battlo

Naturally Ventilated Attic

facade

IN SUBSEQUENT PRESENTATIONS, YOU WILL LEARN MORE ABOUT:

The Cultural Shift that is Modernism and Language as a Technology