UNIT 12 - DVD and BOOK - Impressionism to post impressionism

I usually write this up straight after doing the reading and the viewing but due to a number of time constraints have only just got round to it a week or two later so will see how good my notes are this time!!

Still v much based around France and French artists.

19th Century - the impressionists and post -impressionists about a movement away from the traditional, using different methods, different subject matter, unconventional.  Away from influence of the salon. In 1863 the Salon des Refuses opened to exhibit works rejected by official salon.

Outraged public attacks on artists weren't rare in mid 19th C.  Public were used to seeing smooth, finely painted and highly finished paintings but now they saw rough with broken colour patches like casual sketches. 

Archetypal Impressionist Painting.... (elements seen before but not all together)

• landscape/out of doors subject
• comparatively small scale
• painted mainly 'on the spot' not in the studio
• high toned palette - clear bright colours
• varied, broken brush strokes
• white (not brown) primed canvas
• colours blend optically when viewed from correct distance
• what it really looks like to the artists not following conventional rules

Monet advised  young artist not to think about what he is painting but to notice the colours - a bit of blue here, some pink over there (this is similar to the advice given at start of OCA foundation art and design  for first still life painting.)

Japanese prints

Usually - popular/vulgar subject matter, unorthodox in view point,  fresh and brilliant in colour, 3D simplified to 2D

These started to be imported and had a dramatic effect on Western art in second half of 19C.  First time Western artists able to learn from other cultures.  catalyst for painters to throw off tradition and find new ways of looking. 

Neo-Impressionists

Mid 1880s some artists started going against the ideas of impressionism.  Wanting to get away from casual and fleeting images of impressionism and wanted to put more meaning and time into their work.  Most members were active supporters of the socialist anarchist movement.  Not propagandist but painted mainly proletariat (rather than the bourgeois of the imps) subjects.  But still in agreement that modern Paris is the place to paint. 

Artists include - Seurat, Signac, Pissaro, Henri Edmond Gross

Symbolism

Movement came about from young artists wanting to escape from objective naturalism.  Baudelaire influences - imagination, fantasy, the private world of the self.  Dream like, fantastical paintings.