THE XX CENTURY CHAPTER 29 IMPRESSIONISM CHAPTER 29 IMPRESSIONISM
Jacques rouveyrol
I. REALISM AND IMPRESSIONISM
1. The realism is Courbet Courbet and only .
realism: it is less the representation of reality that transportation in the paint that was previously only mentioned by her.
This table is not a naked woman but the desire of the painter who painted it. (See Course 30, Chapter 29 Realism, III. Courbet, 3. Energy)
Thus, paradoxically, away from the realism of the painting representation. Led (eventually) in abstraction.
2. Impressionism is the heir to the realism.
a. By the subjects it addresses: Work ( Caillebotte The Floor Scrapers ), leisure (Bazille Summer Scene ), modernity (The series of twelve Monet Gare Saint-Lazare ).
b. But we must guard against a misunderstanding. While realism would goal merely a reproduction of reality, subjective impressionism would , under the "impression", varies from one individual to another.
The difference lies elsewhere: in a detachment from the performance.
* • classical picture depicts a scene of life heroic or banal. It is an image.
* • The canvas (or wood or plaster), painting, the trace of brush disappear before the scene depicted. Image of a girl in Vermeer.
* • The table shows the realistic energy of the artist shaping his subject, dealing with the material (canvas, paint brush). It is more paint that picture
* • The table which works by Impressionist work almost hides it represents the art of representation it uses. • The impressionist painting still away from the object. It approximates the paint ... . This example shows that this detail of Monet painting Bathing at Grenouillère .
II. BIRTH OF MODERN ART: MANET
A. THE IMAGE PAINTING THE FORM
Table inaugural modern painting: Manet Olympia 1863
1. Against the imaginary painting
a. In its subject Manet's painting refers to the tradition of extended Venus and particularly the Venus of Urbino by Titian .
b. But in Manet's treatment highlights the specificity (almost unbelievable) of the table which included Titian's Venus at the surface of the canvas in a space that is not compatible with the rest of the table (the maids and trunk). The Olympia Manet shows a woman's body reduced to a surface and treated as such. A
identifies delimits the body. The modeling is reduced to its simplest expression. Painting proceeds by aplats .
only important assembly of colors on the surface of the canvas. The scandal of the Olympia is what portion of image to painting. A "autonomy of painting" (Malraux)
2. Against the imaginary reality
a. The Venus of Urbino expresses something: a gentle unreal - or lost. She does not see what it looks
. Olympia looks. On the one hand look who watch. One enters a world real. 
b. Olympia recovered (awake). The dog Venus rose as well (and was changed into a cat). Olympia is the moment of metamorphosis : transition from the unreal to real. Music in the Tuileries
of the year 1863 caused a scandal in the same way because we see men in jackets and top hats, costume too unconventional painting. The Luncheon on the Grass , the same year, shocked for the same reason: a naked woman (as Olympia), men in jackets (like the Tuileries).
3. Against the imaginary painting .
Already in Music in the Tuileries, the depth is restricted to a small triangle of sky. In Le Bal de l'Opera, Manet same as in The Execution of Emperor Maximilian a balcony or wall bring everything to the forefront. Surface.
In addition, no curve, but straight horizontal and vertical. All lines seem to follow the edges of the frame or chassis as, later, in a part of the production of Frank Stella (such as the Gran Caïro 1962).
Better yet. Sometimes it's the frame of the canvas itself, which appears in the drawing. As The Port of Bordeaux of Manet with the intersection of masts and spars of vessels. This work supports ordinary paint will be current Supports / Surfaces between 1969 and 1972, even Buren.
3. Against reality.
a. A Manet About Olympia, is accused of realism too. Understand: the case against him is in fact an idealization not enough. This woman is a Venus.
b. But this is not the image of a woman. Certainly, if one has regard only to the subject: it is a real woman. But back to the surface of the canvas, the subject does not count. Things to see what are, in the words themselves of Maurice Denis, colors on a canvas assemblies.
So, with his Olympia, Manet broke with all tradition that runs from the Renaissance to Courbet understood.
-He broke with the Olympus, with respect to the subject. He broke with the majestic monument painting-sculpture-architecture. He comes to real .
- He refuses illusion invented by the "shadow painting" (Malraux), inaugurated by Leonardo da Vinci. And this is even more important.
He wants us to come see not a landscape, not a woman lying, not a portrait, not a story, but ... a table.
This does not tell us quite clearly what Olympia is an impressionist canvas.
III. BIRTH OF MODERN ART: MANE
B. THE HISTORY THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD : CONTENT
Another scandal inaugural modern painting, the same year 1863 Luncheon on the Grass.
a. The reference to tradition is all more present than it is this tradition that he is upset. Reference, therefore, to Titian's Pastoral Concert and a Judgement of Paris Raphael, via an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi.
b. But the idealization, again, is lacking. The problem is the familiar, the nude in a landscape.
* Classically, the problem is resolved in the nude in question derealizing: goddess, nymph or biblical character.
* The Women Bathers Courbet although deemed "too real" is however, precisely, a bather. So, not a woman real. She is a woman clad in a costume consisting of the pictorial tradition.
* The woman in the foreground of Lunch Manet, is none of that. It's a naked woman. It is conceivable
still in an interior: the example of Ingres odalisque. But, outside and in addition with men dressed and most importantly in contemporary dress, a nude woman, in these circumstances can only be a prostitute.
In summary:
Impressionism Manet is realistic in its content. The subject is no longer borrowed from tradition. It is the refusal of idealization .
Impressionism Manet, as it rejects both the reality of the subject that the image that claims to give the paint. It is the refusal of illusion . This
for Manet to paint a painting and not to represent something.
From that moment they say: "A Manet, a Pissarro, Picasso, a Rembrandt, a Raphael, etc..)".
But how Luncheon on the Grass Is an impressionist canvas?
Precisely this ambiguity
A painting that is not abstract (completely unrepresentative, non-image), which still has a subject.
same time, a painting which denies any value on this transcendent, timeless ideal, so that paint yet.
A moment of relaxation ( Women in Monet's Garden ), rest ( View Village Bazille), waiting ( The Dance Review Degas), distraction ( Railroad Manet), progress ( La Gare Saint-Lazare Monet), a time of day ( The Poplars on the Epte Monet yet).
Impressionism, that's it, basically. Outside the process (which we will come), is the historical significance of this trend: to be the time when a world is unstable in another.
Impressionism is the history of painting at a time of transition between:
- classical art from the Renaissance to which the subject (hero) is everything and nothing in the form (which must fade to take place for the illusion)
- abstract art which defines the entire contemporary art, in which the subject is nothing (that was not cleared to place the illusion) and shape at all (you should see the paint is paint).
IV. TOPICS IMPRESSIONISTS
painting of the moment, the contemporary is not new. The Dutch genre painting of the XVII is such a painting.
It is also at work among naturalists of the nineteenth century.
Both in the same realistic XIX: Courbet, Daumier, Millet. But the subjects
impressionists are different: * It
first city life: The public gardens ( Music Tuileries Manet, Le Moulin de la Galette Renoir cafes ( A Bar at the Folies Bergere Manet, Degas Absinthe ) entertainment ( Lydia in a Loge Mary Cassatt, The Opera Ball Manet), the streets ( Paris on a rainy day Caillebotte, the series of Pissarro Boulevard Montmartre )
* It then life "in the country" but is still a city life, not a lives of peasants (naturalistic version): Swimming (Bazille Summer Scene); canoeing (different canoes, Caillebotte) the taverns and restaurants ( Lunch at a party boat Renoir, Monet The Grenouillère ) races ( Horses front of the stands Degas); lunches on the Grass (Manet, Monet).
* There are exceptions "naturalists," as that Pissarro painted the countryside willingly. But if the subject is naturalistic, treatment is not.
What is the treatment impressionist?
V. TREATMENT IMPRESSIONIST
impressionistic treatment consists in the fact that the subject "fades" to the form button.
1. Button.
a. In this Beach at Trouville by Monet, art shows itself as artifice. The key is to see. There is nothing there as a naturalist.
b. The Impressionist is a vibration of light .
In the classical painting, the light diffuses . It is is incidental to a revelation of the subject it illuminates. In Impressionism, light vibrates . Is that it is itself the subject paint. Thus, in these R Egadi Monet at Argenteuil.
c. Now the light is there, in the material, less material, more abstract.
When Hegel (German philosopher of the XIX century) traces the history of art by giving it a sense, he pointed out that the first art of a fledgling civilization is always the architecture most material form ( the least spiritual) art, the most subservient to laws outside the spirit (gravity, for example), the least free. Then, as the mind develops, as civilization develops, we move to the sculpture, yet taken in the matter, certainly, but spiritualized by him: the man. Then comes the painting where no more is done in the "paperless" since from three to two dimensions (area) and since this one paints, finally, is this part of the material that is most subtle, almost the least material: light. Next music where the material is reduced to the sound wave invisible. Finally, the poetry where the material yields to the meaning of words, pure expression of the Spirit. While for Hegel the meaning of "abstract / concrete 'is opposite to that in which we hear them here. The fact remains that in the treatment of his subjects Impressionism represents a step toward abstraction.
This work by Kandinsky also seems to show that the abstraction is, at least in part, expanded use of that key.
2. Frame.
a. It is inspired by photography (not copied because the snapshot does not exist yet).
b. It is pre-film (such as when a dolly or a pano-ramic).
c. It is full of movement (a movement but the look more than the subject).
To my knowledge, it meets only in Courbet, and once only, in The Origin of Life , this type of framework that cuts a part of the topic traditional or integrated or off the field.
But unlike in Courbet where one is supposed to dwell on the ground, rather it is a passing glance as we must framing Impressionist. A detached view, casual. A look flaneur, a dandy.
It describes this look as Baudelaire: a look at both curious (which goes retail) and seconded (who is not interested in most). One look good on modern life must be, in turn, only about art.
3. The series
a. The series (here the series of Monet wheels) is primarily a painting of light and its variations.
b. Then it (corollary) the assertion of a lack of interest in the subject (only the light it absorbs or scatters differently at different times, concerns the painter) is a step towards abstraction.
c is finally a research work. Doubtless in the past (for Venice Canaletto, Constable for Salisbury, for example), it was painted the same subject at different times. But it was because the subject always had an interest. Even if, moreover, the light could be painted Venetian for itself, was in a diffused light treatment and not in an Impressionist light treatment vibrant.
Impressionism seeks new possibilities of painting.
In summary, Impressionism:
1. Completes a revolution started with realism: he turns his back on the world of art and painting him into the real world.
2. Start a revolution news: he turns his back to art as a representation of the real world (or ideal) made it happen and the painting itself. This is the revolution that led to: a.
A abstraction.
b. A contemporary art.
ANNEX: KEY Impressionist painters
1. MANET Edouard 1832-1883
2. Claude Monet 1840 - 1926
3. Pissarro Camille 1830 - 1903
4. BAZILLE Frederick 1841 - 1870
5. Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841 - 1919
6. Edgar Degas 1834 - 1917
7. Caillebotte Gustave 1848 - 1894
8. Morisot Berthe 1841 - 1895
9. Cassatt Mary 1844 - 1929
10 SISLEY Alfred from 1839 to 1899
3. Even use of the curve in portraits to emerge "forward" the character or that detail of his face: he is turning the color . 
The gesture of his hands on the thighs is here if needed to the composition of space we can not envisage any changes. Same comment about the Portrait of Ambroise Vollard or Madame Cezanne in a yellow armchair (1893-1895 Art Institute of Chicago). 
Thus, the transposition succeeds in painting when reconstruction involves all elements (space, volumes, illustrated) of reality, without contact with it is broken. 
