ROMANTICISM AND REALISM

Responses to Revolution in the 19th Century

In the last chapter we determined… Revolution is necessary to change social

conditions for lower social classes and for womenRevolution is brought about by economic and

political inequality, in part brought about by new technology that further widens social disparity

The arts serve Revolution by:Inspiring viewers to revolt—visual artsCriticizing what is taken for granted by the

oppressor

But can there be other responses to social inequality?

That leads to this week’s question.

Guiding Question(s)… What is nature?

○ Emotion and Imagination○ The physical environment○ The Self, the Soul

Where is nature to be found?○ Color and loose brushwork—the visual arts○ Landscapes (void of human dominion)○ In humanity and its exploration of soul

We will look at this question primarily through the arts (we will talk about religious questions less frequently).

Guiding Historical Events

Crimean War through 1853-56 Abolition Movement 1860’s—United States Civil War

Emancipation Proclamation Publication of On the Origin of

Species in 1859

RomanticismEmphasis on emotion and imagination, the

individual and the internal, the subjectiveInterest in the Sublime (awe combined with

terror), the strange, and the Near East, the “exotic”

In the visual arts, bold uses of color and movement (to create emotion) with asymmetrical compositions; Brushwork is spontaneous, “uncontrolled”

In the musical arts, tonal painting will be used to create images of natural environments and common folk dances

In literature, references to natural objects will be used to contemplate the human soul

Reflections of the Age

MUSIC

Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, 1875-76Based on Russian folk tales A tale of triumph over evil

through suffering and suicide

Berlioz’, Symphonie Fantastique, Movement 5Sounds like a hallucinatory

vision of the macabreWill inspire soundtrack in

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

Bedřich Smetana, Má Vlast (The Moldau), 1874 Inspired by the Vltava as it

flows from twin springs toward Prague and eventually ending at the Labe

Reflections of the Age

LITERATURE PHILOSOPHY

POETRY will savor Loneliness Emily Dickson○ expresses her Christianity

inwardly○ Lives a private, reclusive,

very emotional life John Keats’ “Ode on

Melancholy”William Wordsworth’s “I

Wandered Lonely As a Cloud”○ Author finds his emotional

state in natural forms○ Solitude a preferred state (it

is subjective and dependent on the individual)

TRANSCENDENTALISMA philosophical and

literary movementUniquely AmericanEmphasizes imagination

and intuitionSeeks to reconcile nature

and humankind (as seen in the poetry of William Wordsworth)○ Ralph Waldo

Emerson○ David Thoreau○ Walt Whitman

Review by Comparison

NEOCLASSICISM ROMANTICISM

Guided by Reason

The arts are inclined to look outward at public themes and civic duty

Preoccupied with the heroic

Guided by Emotion and Imagination

The arts are inclined to look inward, toward the subjective

Preoccupied with the macabre

Delacroix’s, The Twenty-Eighth of July: Liberty Leading the People, 1830

French

Visual art serving the purpose of revolution

Common heroes—woman, students, street urchins

Will inspire the Statue of Liberty given to the US

Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, Liberty Enlightening the World, 1884

Realism Emphasis on everyday life and

common experiences; idealizations are rejected

Fictional subjects are disregarded Subjects are represented

empirically—“faithful record of ordinary life”

Reflections of the Age

LITERATURE PHILOSOPHY

Explores the spiritual, the moral through unsentimental, everyday figures

Explores family dynamics with banal situations

Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Family of spiritualists and hedonists

struggling with each other Dostoyevsky , Crime and

Punishment Raskolnikov murders and women with an

ax and is pursued by Detective Petrovich Tolstoy, War and Peace

Life and Marriage in the Napoleonic Age Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

A woman caught in an affair kills herself by train

Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto Capitalism, Free Trade

inherently pits owners and workers against each other

Establishes the exploitation of workers

As more workers are required for more industry, more workers can unite

So…Redistribution of wealth comes from a working class that fights for its rights

Reflections of the Age

SCIENCE

Publication of On the Origin of Species popularizes scienceWritten for lay

readers Introduced natural

selection as a process in creation “Survival of the

fittest”

Charles Darwin

Gustave Courbet, A Burial At Ornans, 1849

Unidealized look at a crowd Realistically looks at the everyday, the banal Lacks the theatricality of Romanticism

Daumier’s Rue Transonain, April 15, 1834, 1834

Baroque tenebrism spotlights common victim of brutality

Daumier is a social critic who uses the visual to comment on society’s illsFrench

Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, 1863

Presents a nude woman who is unashamed

Expressions reflect ennui of French elite

French

Titian’s The Pastoral Concert, 1510

Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass is a quotation of

Daguerrotype Realism is served

by the invention of a new medium

Becomes popular in portraiture as it captures a truthful likeness

Will confront the usefulness of painting—so the style of painting will change

Käserbier’s The Manger (Ideal Motherhood), ca. 1899

American photographer

References the Birth of Christ but in a, contemporary and secular fashion

Stieglitz’ Winter: Fifth Avenue, 1893

Gertrude Kasebier, Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz

Photography quickly used to record everyday scenes

Eakins’ The Swimming Hole, 1883-5

American painter interested in human anatomy Influenced by photography and uses

photographs to paint

United States

In subsequent presentations, you will learn more about:

Orientalism and Colonization Courbet and the advent of

Modernism United States and the “American”

Landscape

These presentations will prepare you to incorporate the information in the assignments and assessments for the week