Four major Post Impressionist painters, and the aspects of Impressionism that they criticized and...

CHAPTER 29FIN DE SIÈCLE

POST-IMPRESSIONISM

Four major Post Impressionist painters, and the aspects of Impressionism that they criticized and how those criticisms were reflected in their work: Vincent van Gogh

Instead of reproducing the colors exactly as he saw them before his eyes, as Impressionists did, he explored the capabilities of colors and distorted forms to express his emotions as he confronted nature.

Paul GauguinHe rejected objective representation in favor or subjective expression. Unlike the Impressionists but like van Gogh, he believed color above all must be expressive.

Georges SeuratHe was less concerned with the recording of immediate color sensations than he was with their careful and systematic organization into a new kind of pictorial order.

Paul CézanneHe felt that Impressionism lacked form and structure. His objective was to create a lasting structure behind the formless and fleeting visual information the eye absorbs.

Katsushika Hokusai

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

1857color woodblock print9 7/8 x 14 3/4 in.

Ando Hiroshige

Plum Garden, Kameido

1857color woodblock print36 x 24 cm

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

At the Moulin Rouge

1892-1895oil in canvas4 ft. x 4 ft. 7 in.

Vincent van Gogh

The Night Café

1888oil on canvas2 ft. 4 1/2 in. x 3 ft.

For Van Gogh, the primary purpose of color in his paintings was to express emotion “of an ardent temperament.”

Vincent van Gogh

Starry Night

1889oil on canvas2 ft. 5 in. x 3 ft. 1/4 in.

Vincent van Gogh

Starry Night

1889oil on canvas2 ft. 5 in. x 3 ft. 1/4 in.

Application of paint:The thickness, shape, and direction of his brush strokes create a tactile counterpart to his intense color schemes. He moved the brush vehemently back and forth or at right angles, or squeezed dots or streaks onto the canvas from a paint tube.

Paul Gauguin

The Vision after the Sermon

1888oil on canvas2 ft. 4 3/4 in. x 3 ft. 1/2 in.

Gauguin's use of color differed from Van Gogh's in that his color areas are flatter, often visually dissolving into abstract patches or patterns.

Paul Gauguin

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

1897oil on canvas4 ft. 6 13/16 in. x 12 ft. 3 in.

Gauguin spent the last ten years of his life in Tahiti.

Paul Cézanne

The Basket of Apples

ca. 1895oil on canvas2 ft. 3/8 in. x 2 ft. 7 in.

"I want to make of Impressionism something solid and lasting like the art in the museums”

Paul Cézanne.

Mount Sainte Victoire

Paul Cézanne

Mount Sainte Victoire

1885oil on canvas

Paul Cézanne

Mount Sainte Victoire

1897oil on canvas

Paul Cézanne

Mount Sainte-Victoire

1902-1904oil on canvas2 ft. 3 1/2 in. x 2 ft. 11 1/4 in.

The role color played in Cézanne's paintings:To create the effects of distance, depth, structure, and solidity.The power of colors to modify the direction and depth of lines and planes.

NEOIMPRESSIONISM

Georges SeuratA Sunday on La Grande Jatte1884-1886oil on canvas6 ft. 9 in. x 10 ft.

The French painter who used the work of color theorists like Chevreul and Rood to develop a scientifically precise method of applying paint was Georges Seurat.The technique did he develop for applying color to canvas was called Pointillism (or divisionism): the separation of carefully observed colors into their component parts. The artist applies these pure component colors to the canvas in tiny dots or daubs. The shapes on the canvas become comprehensible only from a distance, where the viewer’s eye blends the dots.

successive contrasts (afterimages)

Georges Seurat

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

1884-1886oil on canvas6 ft. 9 in. x 10 ft.

SYMBOLISM“avant-garde”

“Front guard,” a synonym for any particularly new or cutting-edge cultural manifestation, derived from nineteenth-century French military usage where the avant-garde were soldiers sent ahead of the army’s main body to reconnoiter and make occasional raids on the enemy.

Avant-garde refers to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.

Pierre Puvis de ChavannesThe Sacred Grove1884oil on canvas2 ft. 11 1/2 in. x 6 ft. 10 in.

By the end of the nineteenth century, a major change occurred in the artist's vision of reality:The representation of nature had become completely subjectivized to the point that artists did not imitate nature but created free interpretations of it.

Puvis de Chavannes was admired by members of the Academy because of his classicism while the avant-garde artists admired him because of his vindication of imagination and artistic independence from the world of materialism and the machine.

Arnold Böcklin

Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Violin

1872oil on canvas

Franz von Stuck

The Sin

1893oil on canvas

Gustave Moreau

Jupiter and Semele

ca. 1875oil on canvas7 ft. x 3 ft. 4 in.

Three stylistic characteristics of the work of Gustave Moreau.Gorgeous color.Intricate line.Richly detailed shape.

Gustave Moreau

Oedipus and the Sphinx

1864oil on canvas81 1/4 x 41 1/4 in.

Odilon Redon

The Cyclops

1898oil on canvas2 ft. 1 in. x 1 ft. 8 in.

According to Redon, his originality consisted in: “Bringing to life, in a human way, improbable beings and making them live according to the laws of probability, by putting … the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible.”

Henri RousseauThe Sleeping Gypsy1897oil on canvas4 ft. 3 in. 6 ft. 7 in.

The work of Henri Rousseau can be related to that of the Symbolists through his reliance on dream and fantasy, but his style differs from theirs in the following way:

His visual, conceptual, and technical naiveté was compensated for by a natural talent for design and an imagination teeming with exotic images of mysterious tropical landscapes.

Edvard MunchThe Scream1893oil, pastel and casein on cardboard2 ft. 11 3/4 in. x 2 ft. 5 in.

The major themes in the work of Edvard Munch:

The pain of human life, the powerlessness of humans before the great natural forces of death and love and the emotions associated with them.

Edvard Munch

The Dance of Life

1900oil on canvas

49 1/2 x 75 1/2 in.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

Ugolino and His Children

1865-1867marble6 ft. 5 in. high

Stylistic influences are most evident in the sculpture of Jean‑Baptiste Carpeaux:

Realism, Baroque, classicism, and Michelangelo.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Adams Memorial

1891bronze5 ft. 10 in. high

The style Augustus Saint Gaudens utilized for his ‑monument to Mrs. Henry Adams was considered Classical.

Auguste Rodin

Walking Man

1905bronze6 ft. 11 3/4 in. high

Concerns Rodin shared with the Impressionists:

The effect of light on the three-dimensional surface.

Concerns he shared with Muybridge and Eakins:

The human body in motion.

Auguste Rodin

Burghers of Calais

1884-1889bronze6 ft. 10 1/2 in. high

What did the commisioners of the Burghers of Calais find offensive in the work?The roughly textured figures, the bedraggled impression of the burghers, and the absence of a platform to separate the sculpture from the viewing public.

ARTS AND CRAFTS

The Arts and Crafts movement originated in England.

The goal of the movement was to decry the impact of rampant industrialism and to create an “art made by the people for the people as a joy for the maker and the user.”

William Morris

Green Dining Room

1867

The type of objects its members produced included interior decorative objects such as wallpaper, textiles, furniture, books, rugs, stained glass, pottery, windows, lights, and wainscoting.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Ingram Street Tea Room

Glasgow, Scotland

1900-1902

The Scottish artists who practice the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement:

William Morris and Charles Rennie and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.

Two adjectives that describe the designs of husband and wife:Precisely geometricRhythmical

ART NOUVEAUThe style that developed out of the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement was given different names in different countries:

in France, Belgium, Holland, England and the United States:

L’Art Nouveauin Germany:

Jugendstilin Spain:

Modernismoin Italy:

Floreale or Liberty

Victor Horta

staircase in the Van Eetvelde House

Brussels, Belgium

1896

Four sources from which Art Nouveau artists drew inspiration:

The Arts and Crafts movement

Japanese prints

Symbolism

Post-Impressionists such as Van Gogh and Gauguin

Aubrey Beardsley

The Peacock Skirt for Oscar Wilde’s Salome

1894pen-and-ink illustration

The sort of forms were preferred by Art Nouveau artists included the twining plant form, tendrils, and delicate tracery.

The English Graphic artist who worked at the intersection of Art Nouveau and symbolism was Aubrey Beardsley

Antonio Gaudi

Casa Milá

Barcelona, Spain

1907

Gaudi’s architectural style:Sculpturally modeled, imaginative, free-form masses with an emphasis on surface.

Gustav Klimt

The Kiss

1907-1908oil on canvas5 ft. 10 3/4 in. x 5 ft. 10 3/4 in.

Gustav Klimt

Judith II

1909oil on canvas178 x 46 cm

Gustav Klimt

Death and Life

1908-11oil on canvas

70 1/8 x 78 in.

Louis Comfort Tiffany

Lotus Table Lamp

ca. 1905leaded favrile glass, mosaic and bronze2 ft. 10 1/2 in. high

Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel

Eiffel Tower

Paris, France

1889wrought iron984 ft. high

Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel

Eiffel Tower

Paris, France

1889wrought iron984 ft. high

Henry Hobson Richardson

Marshall Field wholesale store

Chicago, Illinois

1885-1887

Louis Henry Sullivan

Guaranty Building

Buffalo, New York

1894-1896

Louis Henry Sullivan

Carson, Pirie Scott Building

Chicago, Illinois

1899-1904