This course provides a critical introduction to modernist artistic movements starting from the Salon des Refusés in 1863. It examines Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Dada and other avant-garde styles in their historical and cultural contexts. The course structure includes 11 weeks covering these movements and their influence in reshaping representations of the modern world.

1. Salon des Refusés: Breaking with the Academy

4. [email_address]

5. Participation

7. Leonardo da Vinci (1483) Virgin of the Rocks Why did Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks become part of one of the earliest legal suits in art history?

8. Penguin Classics, George Bull’s translation of Live of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. (Vasari 1987 [1568], p. 360) What does this legal suit tell us about the mistranslation of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists ?

9. What’s peculiar about the content of this image?

10. What key developments had a big impact upon artists working in the 18 th and 19 th Centuries?

11. The Enlightenment “ A universal dictionary is an opus which proposes to fix the meaning of the terms of a language, by defining those which can be defined, through a short, meticulous, clear, and precise enumeration or the qualities of ideas attached to them. The only good definitions are those that group the essential attributes of the thing designated by the word.” (Diderot 1755)

12. French Revolution Eugiene Delacroix (1831) Liberty Leading the People

13. Industrial Revolution William Simpson (1851) Souvenir of the Great Exhibition, the Foreign Department viewed from Transept

14. “ Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober sense, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind”. Marx, K and Engels, F (2005 [1847]) The Communist Manifesto, London, Bookmarks Publications. P.10.

15. Consumerism Above, Postcard of the Paris Exposition of 1900. Right, Bon Marche department store (1897).

20. Academies Charles le Brun (1663) , study of emotions

21. Charles Le Brun (1679-84) The King Governs Alone

23. Salons Gabriel- Jaques de Saint-Aubin The Salon of 1765

24. Ekphrasis

26. Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock (1981) Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology.

27. Copying from the Canon Marcantonio Raimondi, after Raphael, Massacre of the Innocents , c. 1513 – 15.

28. Nicholas Poussin (1638-40) The Arcadian Shepherds Nicholas Poussin (1628-9) The Arcadian Shepherds

29. Oscar Gustave Rejlander (1857) The Two Ways of Life

30. Politics in 19 th late Century France Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1852) Napolean III

31. Salon des Refusés Palais de l’industrie

32. Salon des Refusés Édouard Manet (1862-3) Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe

34. Impressionism? Camille Pissarro (1973) White Frost

35. Impressionism? Camille Pissarro (1973) White Frost

36. Critical support for the Independents Frédéric Bazille (1870) The Artist’s Studio in the Rue de la Condamine

37. Readings of Impressionism “ For the first time in three centuries, French society is giving birth to a school of French painting that is in its own image, and no longer in the image of peoples, now extinct; a painting, which describes its own appearance and way of life, and no longer those of civilizations long vanished; which in its very facet bears the imprint of that society’s luminous grace and clear, lucid, penetrating mind” (Castagnary 1867, in Harrison, Wood and Gaiger (1998), p. 413) “ What I ask of the artist is not that he give me sweet visions or terrible nightmares, but that he give of himself, body and soul, that he clearly express the force and singularity of his mind, the harshness and strength of his character, that he take nature firmly in his grasp and set it down firmly in front of us just as he sees it [...] The works of tomorrow cannot be the same as those today, you cannot formulate any rules or devise any formulae; you have to give in willingly to your nature and avoid self deception. Are you afraid of speaking your own language, you who spend hours transcibing dead ones?” (Zola 1866, in Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, (1998), p. 552-3)

38. Baudelaire (1821-1867) Nadar (1855) Charles Baudelaire

39. Readings of Impressionism “ ... It was through Impressionist paintings that urban life based on leisure, consumption and spectacle first acquired visible identity, one conveyed through forms that imply the free expression of the artist’s personal vision. Moreover, Impressionism also provide us with a model for how artists act – independent of convention and true to self. If it still appears natural today, it is because its ideals continue to be so dominant that most people now take them completely for granted.” Rubin, p.4

40. T J Clark (1984) The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the art of Manet and his Followers

41. Leonardo da Vinci (1483) Virgin of the Rocks Why did Leonardo da Vinci’s [sic] Virgin of the Rocks become part of one of the earliest legal suits in art history? [see Shiner p.35]

42. Penguin Classics, George Bull’s translation of Live of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects. (Vasari 1987 [1568], p. 360) What does this legal suit tell us about the mistranslation of Lives of the Artists ?

43. What’s peculiar about the content of this image? Rapael Sanzio (1512-14) The Sistine Madonna . The Old Master’s Picture Gallery, Dresden

48. Paul C é zanne (1883) Bather with Outstretched Arms

50. El Lissitzky (1919) Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge