Photography isms-rodin 2018

1. From Photography to the next “isms”
Chapters 27-28
Photography
Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Symbolism
and…
Sculpture

2. PHOTOGRAPHY
1. Discovery of the principle of
the camera obscura (pinhole camera
or dark room). Starts in China and
Greece.
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (965 in Basra
(Iraq/Iran region) – c. 1040) gave the
first clear description of the camera
obscura. “father of modern optics”
- image at Right
1. Observation that some substances
are visibly altered by exposure to
light.

3. Niepce- first photo 1826, on pewter, 8 hour exposure
used bitumen as photosensitive chemical

4. William Henry Fox Talbot: Calotype

5. Anna Atkins 1799-1871
English botanist and photographer.
The first person to publish a book illustrated
with photographic images.
Some sources claim that she was the first
woman to create a photograph.
Friends with Sir John Herschel- inventor of
the Cyanotype process in 1842

6. Daguerre- first photo of a person

7. Daguerrotype
Inspiring today’s art: http://www.flickriver.com/photos/virtually_supine/3054749898/

10. Muybridge, Calotype- 1878

11. REALISM, IMPRESSIONISM, POST-IMPRESSIONISM
MID-TO-LATE 19TH CENTURY
Paris now a modern city with a large wealthy middle-class
• -US forces Japan to open in 1854: led to a love for Japanese art
The Modern Artist Emerges:
• -Dependent on market and taste of middle class for economic stability
-Artist has an individual sense of mission in combat with public taste
• -Desire for personal aesthetic expression
• -Artist becoming alienated from society for avante-garde ideas & work
• -Artists group themselves with like-minded artists
• -Movement comprised of artists dealing with same artistic and social questions:
What is art? What is art for? Whom is art for?

12. French Salons:
• -Dominated by French
classicists
• -In 1863, Salon de Refuses
(Salon of the rejected) set
up by Napoleon III for those
refused by “Salon” (3000 of
5000 works rejected)
• Dealers begin to replace
Salons as means of
selling/buying work
• Modern Inventions that
affect Impressionists: less
need for naturalism
1. Camera
2. Mass produced print
(woodblocks, etchings)
Top: Bougereau
Left: (top and bottom), Gerome

13. Luncheon on the Grass (1863) (7’X 8’10”)

14. Edouard Manet
-French artist who captures a new
degree of realism
-Rebelled against the lack of real
naturalism in bodies and poses of
artists like Bougereau, who painted
mythological scenes
-A Realist, but consciously sought to
move art forward; a risk taker
-Exhibited in Salon de Refuses in 1863
His work outraged public; he was
declared incompetent, immoral
-Manet claimed his intention was to
translate the traditions of the Masters
into contemporary terms

15. Edouard Manet
Modernity :
-Figures not allegorical
-Figures in painting identifiable: Manet’s
favorite model at time, his brother Eugene,
and sculptor friend, Ferdinand Leenhof
-Dressed in fashionable attire of time
-Nude not idealized; confronts viewer w/out
shame
-Paints modern people- what the eye sees,
here & now
Style:
-harsh frontal lighting
-Stark contrasts like a flashed photograph
-flat; little emphasis on Corot’s wide range of
values
-Background not altogether believable
-Background in focus, with awkward
proportions
--Sketchy brushwork; broad brushstrokes
-Broad patches of cool color
-Flattened forms throughout work
influenced by Japanese prints

16. Edouard Manet Olympia (1863)

17. Olympia (1863)
-A well-known courtesan/prostitute of time, crossed boundaries of class
-Modeled after Titian's Venus of Urbino; but cat represents sexuality, hand is not inviting
-A challenge to the public that was used to allegorical or mythological nudes
-Confrontational gaze- frank, weary and emotionally dead
-Public believed that he had stepped over boundary of decency
-Flatness emphasized, harshly lit
-Deep contrasts: white vs. black
-Contrast of flat vs. floral/patterned

18. A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) (37”X 51”)
-MANET now associated with Impressionists
-Focuses on Impressionist interests in light, use of brilliant color & a direct approach to subject
-fascination with the effects of light spilling from gas globes onto figures and objects around them
-Bar maid just one of many patterns of light and dark. Shows impersonality towards subject matter
-Scene is really an "optical event”, cool objective approach based on optical sensations

19. Impressionism
• -Begins around 1862 (approx. 13 years after “Burial at Ornans”)
• 1874 – 1886 Main exhibitions dates
• -depicting contemporary life as it was immediately perceived by the eye
• -Plein-air painters; worked out of doors, painting directly from nature
• -Subjects: scenes of Parisian activities and local landscapes
Composition
• -Heavily influenced by Japanese prints and the camera
• -Asymmetrical, often with diagonals and angles
• -De-centered, often with large empty spaces
• -Abrupt cropping
• -Unusual points of view

21. Light:
• -Spontaneous representation of atmosphere,
climate and light
• -Able to capture the fugitive, vibrating,
fleeting quality of light
Color:
• -Science of light, color, and chemical pigments
all new
• -High keyed (light) colors; (many just invented)
• -use of “non-local color” (color modified by
light/shadow/reflections)
• Shadows have color (not just brown/black)
• -Effects of juxtaposed colors
• -Pure colors next to each other, with eye
mixing the colors: more intensity
• -Often juxtaposed primaries, blended by the
eye to make secondaries
• -complementary colors (intensifies the others;
also become neutrals when mixed)
Renoir

23. Brushwork:
• -Short, choppy, broken, quick, thick brushstrokes
• -Capture the vibrating quality of light
• -Soft focus; lack of well-defined detail
• -Quick oil sketches accurately record landscape's general appearance
• -Manet raises traditional sketches to same level as completed paintings ("not finished”)
Application of Paint
• -Impasto paint, not as many hard lines
Changes/Innovations
• -De-emphasis on contour and form
• -De-emphasis on linear perspective & detail
• -Tendency to Flatten space
Artists
• -Form independent society (corporation) to exhibit and market their art
• -30 artists exhibited 165 works:
• -A critic titles his review: Exhibit of Impressionists- Term quickly adopted
• -Have 8 shows l: 1874 – 1886. By 1886 most Impressionists accepted as serious artists

25. Claude Monet Impression: sunrise 1872
focus on cool colors, complementary colors, non-local color

27. Industrial revolution and “Japonisme”
Interest in woodblock prints by Hokusai and
Hiroshige- Edo period Ukiyo-e artists
St Lazare Station 1877

28. St Lazare Station 1877

34. Renoir

35. Caillebotte

36. Edgar Degas

37. • Color in shadows
• Use of pastel

39. Mary Cassatt
http://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=ydMq-18mveY

40. The Coiffure
1890
Drypoint and aquatint

41. POST-IMPRESSIONISM
• -Younger artists and Impressionists
themselves but they question the style and
its limitations
• -Felt that psychological/emotional depth
was missing
• - 5 new artists emerge: all of whom were
trained in the Impressionist style: George
Seurat, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin,
Paul Cezanne & Toulouse-Lautrec
• -Post Impressionism is a catch-all term for
work of five artists
• -More broadly, term encompasses a
generation of innovations 1880-1910
• -Goal is to capture the essential quality or
nature of a scene; not the transient moment
of a scene

42. Toulouse-Lautrec

43. Van Gogh

45. Gaugin

46. Gaugin
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
1898

48. Gaugin: portrait of Van Gogh

49. Seurat

50. Seurat
-Shows in last (8th) Impressionist exhibition (1874-1886)
-Considered Impressionism too shallow, too improvisational
-Seeks to "correct it”. Wants to clean it up, bring back solid form & simplify
-Especially fascinated with systems and methods. Very intellectual
-"I apply my method and that is all there is"
--Died at 32

51. -Interested in color mixing theories of Delacroix & scientists Von Helmholtz and Chevreul (top
right photo)
Divisionism:
-Goal was to obtain the utmost luminosity in color by not mixing colors, but letting the dots
of pure color mix in the eye of the viewer-Optical mixing
-Culminates in Pointillism, which also lets the white of the canvas show through
Pointillism:
-Small dabs of pure color placed adjacent to each other to created the desired color effect

52. Color in shadows

53. Neville Gabie: Artist in Residence at
Olympic Park, UK 2012

54. Cezanne

55. Cezanne
-doesn’t paint from typical one-point
perspective
-Also, he liked the element of tension
the ambiguity created
-Reduces everything down to essential
forms: cube, cylinder, sphere, & cone
-Uses constructive stroke to emphasize
the geometric planes of forms
-Strokes define the planar structure of
subject matter
-Hatching strokes are rhythmic
-Shifting perspectives: everything seen
from a little bit different point of view Experiments with color to create space-
Warm colors come forward, cool colors recede.
Mont St. Victoire 1904

57. Cezanne
-

58. AUGUSTE RODIN (1840-1917)
French Sculptor
• -Classically trained
• -Contemporary of Impressionists & Post-impressionists
but not especially drawn to them
• -Traveled to Italy and discovered Michelangelo &
Donatello
• -Develops a unique style influenced by Michelangelo
• -Single-handedly revives sculpture as a worthy medium
• -Uses body to express ideas and emotions
• -Anticipates 20th century Expressionism

59. Rodin
(only 12 casts per sculpture allowed by French government)

60. Burghers of Calais 1895

61. The Thinker (1879-89) bronze
• -Small figure from Gates of Hell
• -Drawn to the body’s uniqueness for
emotional expression
• -Tried to express the existential situation
of modern man and his inability to
communicate his deeper despair
• Existentialism: a widely accepted
philosophy centered upon the analysis of
existence, but de-emphasizing or
eliminating God
• -Stresses man’s choices of freedom,
responsibility & commitment
• -Yet man’s place in the universe is
pointless & hopeless
• Rodin’s Goal: "To render inner feelings
through muscular movement”
• -Abandons classical, stylized traditions of
the time (different than Canova-
neoclassical sculpture)

62. Stanford Medicine:
http://museum.stanford.edu/
news_room/Rodins-
hands.html
Surgeon James Chang
on Rodin’s Hands

63. SYMBOLISM:• -Moving into the 20th century, artists reject
the imitation of reality in favor of a world of
fantasy
• -Symbolism manifesto published in 1886-
Rejects materialism and mores of middle
class society
• -Akin to the aim of Romantics (Delacroix,
Gericault), but the Symbolists were mainly
interested in the world of imagination, not
physical world. More subjective.
• -Literature/dreams used for subject and
material
• -Loved the esoteric, exotic, weird,
mysterious, dreamlike, fantastic, mysterious
• -World of unconscious now of interest
• -1900: Sigmund Freud’s “Interpretation of
Dreams”
• -Symbolists inspired the Surrealists

64. Henri Rousseau

65. Rousseau: “The Dream” MOMA

66. Munch
The Scream
1893
Tempera and Pastel
one version sold for 119
million in 2012
Colors
Brushstrokes
Norwegian but influenced by
Gaugin and Van Gogh

67. Munch

68. Klimt
“The Kiss”
1908
Austrian

69. Klimt
Austrian