Chapter 29

The Rise of ModernismThe Late Nineteenth Century

Industrialization

• First industrial revolution c. 1750-1825• Mechanization of textiles with steam power• Production of iron and its use in new building

technologies• Second industrial revolution c. 1875-1900• Mechanization of other industries using

electricity• Steel used in building created possibility of the

high-rise structure.

Industrialization: Human Factors

• Migration of population to urban centres.• Increase in size and number of cities.• Decrease in the number of farms.• Increase in size of remaining farms.• More work in cities, especially in factories• Urban working poor faced abysmal living and

working conditions.• No health care, weekends, job security,

retirement

The City

• Increasing size of cities creates completely different landscape

• Decreasing amounts of vegetation, greenspacewithin city changes health of individuals

• Rise of air pollution• City becomes map for people’s lives• Working poor are born, live, and die within an

area of a few city blocks• The city determines one’s loyalties, work,

language, social network, etc.

The Communist Manifesto

• Published by Marx and Engels in 1848.• Called for the urban working class to overthrow the

capitalist system.• Stated that economic forces determine historical change.• Control of economy based on control of the means of

production.• Bourgeoisie controlled the means of production—the rich

get richer, the poor are exploited.• Creation of theory of class conflict.• The avante garde is a communist idea – the vanguard of

the revolution.

Imperialism

• Establishment of colonial empires all over the world by England, France, Spain, Holland, Germany.

• Economic Imperialism includes United States in China and Japan.

• Racial and National hierarchies determined the superiority of Europe and America over Africa and Asia.

• France controlled North Africa and Indochina; British were in India, Australia, much of Africa; the Dutch control Indonesia; Portugese and Spanish in Africa and South America; the Germans and Italians have colonies in Africa.

• Aboriginal art from these colonies is brought back to 19thcentury Europe and has a strong impact on artists there.

Modernity:The State of Being Modern

• The transient state of world contributes to people’s unease with present conditions.

• A sense of history becomes essential—a distinct “past” gives hope for a future.

• Art embraces modernity by becoming self-critical.

• Artists begin to embrace the idea of art as a process.

• Illusionism is rejected for social realism.

Modernism

• As an art movement, modernism seeks to capture the images and sensibility of the age.

• Involves the artist with the production and process of art. The artist becomes more important than the patron.

• It calls attention to the artwork as artwork—thefact that all painting is paint on a flat surface, before it is a person, bowl of fruit, etc.

• “Modernism used art to call attention to art”—Clement Greenberg.

Artistic Style: Realism

• An attempt by artists to present what is “real” in their art.

• Overt rejection of all traditional subject matter.• No history painting, religious works, heroic

battles, ancient subjects.• “Show me an angel and I’ll paint one”— Courbet.• No allegories, angels, gods, goddesses,

Socrates, Homer, Caesar.• Attention given to non-classical, non-historic

subjects.

Realism -How to use this word

• When discussing a painting, NEVER usethe word “realistic” to describe how closelyit imitates the natural world.

• Use illusionistic to describe a painting thatseems to look much what one would see in real life or in a photograph.

29-1 Courbet,The Stonebreakers, 1849

29-2 Courbet, Burial at Ornans, 1849

29-3 Millet The Gleaners,1857

29-6 Daumier, Third Class Carriage,1862

The Salon

• An art exhibit held annually in Paris• Judged by members of the Academie Francaise• Source of lucrative commissions.• Paintings purchased by bougeois patrons.• Rejected paintings were marked refusé on back

of canvas• Artists’ careers were made or broken by

acceptance/rejection.• Manet did have his work accepted, may have

reflected his social class.• Rules seemed arbitrary.

The Salon des Refusés

• In 1863, works of artists not accepted by the Salon jury were given their own (separate) showing.

• The Salon des Refusés included such works by Manet as the Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) and Olympia.

• People were so shocked by these works, and later by the Impressionists, that people were warned to stay away from the exhibit.

29-7 Manet, Luncheon on the Grass, 1863

29-7 Manet, Olympe, 1865 – Refusé!

29-10 Rosa BonheurThe Horse Fair, 1853-55

29-14 John Everett Millais,Ophelia,1852

Impressionism

• In 1874 the Independent Society of Painters andSculptors mounted their own exhibition inopposition to the Salon (165 works, 33 artists).

• Eight Impressionist exhibits were held until 1886.• Berthe Morisot was the only artist to have work

in every Impressionist exhibit.• “Impressionism” was a derogatory term applied

to the work of these artists.

29-17 Monet,Impression: Sunrise, 1872

29-18 MonetSaint LazareTrain Station, 1877

29-19 Caillebotte,Paris: A Rainy Day

29-20 Edgar DegasViscount Lepic and His Daughters, 1873

29-25 Edgar DegasThe Dance Class

29-27 Berthe MorisotVilla at the Seaside, 1874

29-28 Claude MonetRouen Cathedral, 1892-1894z

29-29 Edgar Degas, The Tub

29-30 Mary Cassatt, The Bath, 1892

Two Bathers

29-31 Henri de Toulouse LautrecAt the Moulin Rouge 1892-5

Post-Impressionism

• Catch-all term for the art of Van Gogh, Gaugin, Seurat, Cézanne, etc.

• Systematic study of line, colour, pattern, and form.

• Initial acceptance of Impressionism by theseartists.

• Eventual rejection of Impressionism as tootransitory, a “dead end”—no ability to draw.

29-33 Van Gogh, The Night Café,1888

29-34 Van Gogh, Starry Night,1889

29-35 GauginThe Vision after the Sermon, 1888

29-37 Georges SeuratSunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande

Jatte, 1897

29-39 CézanneMonte Sainte Victoire, 1902-1904

The Avant-Garde

• Originally used to denote artistic works that were ahead of their time (borrowed from military, political usage).

• Artistic conventions—the academic—consistently rejected in each successive art movement of the late 19th century.

• Awareness of the medium• Self awareness of artist• Search for the next thing—the present is already past

•Increasing disengagement from the public—thus rejecting the “modernist” as part of social world of the present.

The Symbolists

• Interpretation of what the artist sees; not a “re-presentation” of what he/she sees.

• The fact must be transformed into a symbol of the inner idea or experience of the fact.

• To see beyond the real, to see the deeper significance ofevents, ideas, things.

• Art as experience of the interior life, wholly alternate, wholly other than reality.

• 1899 Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams.

• "I believe only in what I do not see." Gustave Moreau.• Antithetical to Courbet and the Realists.

29-45 Edvard MunchThe Scream (The Cry), 1893

Georges Braque, Harbour, 1904

Georges Braque, Harbour in Normandy

Matisse, The Bathers

Matisse, The Dance

Kandinsky, Composition IV

Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Picasso, Ma Jolie