The Gleaners
French Realism
oil on canvas
1857
by Jean-Francois Millet

Third Class Carriage
French Realism
oil on canvas
1863-65
by Honore Daumier

Luncheon on the Grass
French Realism
oil on canvas
1863
by Edouard Manet

Olympia
French Realism
oil on canvas
1863
by Edouard Manet

The Bar at the Folies-Bergere
French Realism
oil on canvas
1881-2
by Edouard Manet

-comes from direct observation of society and nature
-time of great change in society

Immanuel Kant-theorized the importance of the "disinterested viewer," that is the process of evaluating a work without sentiment based on the formal qualities of the piece.

G.F.W. Hegel-saw art as a sort of "conscience" for the world and believed that it should exist on the perimeter of society to reflect and critque society. He said that the clash of contrary principles helps society progress.

French Realist Painting

-portrayed "proletariat" or working class or direct observation of nature

The Barbizon School
-group of landscape painters who worked in the "open air" not in studio
-created picturesque landscape paintings
-considered "lowbrow" by Academy

Jean Baptiste Corot (1796-1875)
-worked directly from nature
-tried to portray subjects from "life"
-began as an academic painter like many of the Salon painters of the time (example: Bougereau)

Jean-Francois Millet (1814-75)
-depicted peasants and working people
-elevated genre to higher level

The Gleaners- 1857, oil on canvas, 2'9"x 3'8"
-view of peasants and pulling the last fragments of straw from a field

Gustave Courbet (1819-77)
-created allegorical paintings about society
-Burial at Ornans, 1849-50, oil on canvas
-The Painter's Studio Studio (A Real Allegory of Seven Years of My Life), 1855, oil on canvas, exhibited by itself at Paris World's Fair.

Honore Daumier (1808-79)
-caricaturist and artist
-did political satire and was imprisoned for offending the King (Gargantua).
-often used lithography as a medium. Lithography is a process where an artist will work directly on a special kind of stone with a grease pencil. The artist then "fixes" the image into the stone by adding a gum arabic and nitric acid solution. This causes the greasy pencil lines to adhere to the stone and attract ink. It also causes the undrawn areas of stone to attract water, and repel ink. Because the ink is sitting on top of the stone, one can make an infinite number of prints on paper.

Rue Transonian, lithograph, c.1830's

Third Class Carriage, 1862, oil on canvas
-portrays life and class within French society

Edouard Manet
-used familiarity and confrontational views to shock and comment on society
-believed that a good painting is true to itself

Dejeuner sur L'Herbe (Luncheon in the Grass), 1863, oil on canvas, 7'x 9'
-depiction of recognizable figures with a nude in public setting
-color builds from muted in background to bold in foreground

Olympia, 1863, oil on canvas
-recognized prostitute depicted as a Greek goddess. This contradicted theories of morality in Classicism by confronting a viewer with reality.

Bar at the Folies-Bergere, 1881-2, oil on canvas
-reflection of the seemy side of Parisian aristocracy
-the "real" is shown through the familiarity of the subject

Impression: Sunrise
French Impressionism
oil on canvas
1872
by Claude Monet

The Little Dancer Fourteen Years Old
French Impressionism
bronze sculpture
1878-81
by Edgar Degas

-was interested in the effects of color
-based on observation, not interested in politics or religion
-"art for art's sake"
-used broken color, rather than flat

French Impressionism
-Impressionism began in France with a group of artists interested in color

Claude Monet
-leader of the Impressionist movement
-used diffused light and color to create composition

Impression: Sunrise, 1872, oil on canvas
-this is the work that Impressionism is named for
-one critic advised that small children or pregnant women should not see this
-uses broken color to show the changing nature of light on water

Rouen Cathedral and Haystack series
-a series is a number of works of art that are related in some way. Usually an artist will develop an idea by doing it over and over again. A series is often a group of works that reflect a particular idea or image that one artist has worked over and over.

Auguste Renoir
-worked on figures in Impressionist style
The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881, oil on canvas

Edgar Degas
-lived in New Orleans for a short time.
-Many works with dancers as subject.

Absinthe, 1876, oil on canvas

Little Dancer Fourteen Years Old, 1881, bronze sculpture

Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte
French Post-Impressionism
oil on canvas
1884-6
by Georges Seurat

The Starry Night
French Post-Impressionism
oil on canvas
1889
by Vincent Van Gogh

-was a movement based on Impressionism
-more theoretical in its nature
-more experimentation

Painting
-Post-Impressionist painting concentrated on color and brushstroke

Paul Cezanne
-worked on theory that an object could be broken into planes of color
-began this theory by working from apples (Still Life with Apples, c. 1890), then expanded into figures, etc.

Mount Sainte Victoire series
-a series of views of a mountian landscape with emphasis on the color reflections and color shifts in the landscape.

Georges Seurat
-used a process called Pointillism
-worked with theories about optical color mixing and color complements

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884-6, oil on canvas
-group of people in an outdoor environment
-small dots of color that change as the viewer gets further away

Vincent Van Gogh
-works with expressive qualities of color and brushstroke

The Night Cafe,
-uses psychological color as well as night lighting

Starry Night, c. 1888-9, oil on canvas
-uses line, shape and color in expressive ways

Paul Gaugin
-worked in Tahiti looking for the "noble Savage" a common myth of the time
-used flat and brilliant color
-psychological color

The Red Room
Fauvist
oil on canvas
1908
by Henri Matisse

The Scream
Expressionism
oil on canvas
1893
by Edward Munch

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Cubism
oil on canvas
1907
by Pablo Picasso

Modernism was a movement that started around 1880 and ended in 1980. It was characterized by its theoretical approach to art. "Art for art's sake" was a term which exemplified this movement because it basically said that art should be examined further to find out more about itself. The Modernists worked on theories of color, spirituality, universality, psychology, perception and the idea behind the art sometimes became more important than the image produced.

-worked from ideas in psychology like Faber Birren's Psychology of Color. Birren found that people reacted differently when exposed to different colors. For instance, red made people hungry; blue was a calming color; etc.

Expressionism

Edward Munch, The Scream, 1893, oil on canvas.
-expressive character and mode of communication.

the Fauves
-means "wild beasts" in French, referring to use of wild color and flat planes
-associated with the work of Cezanne
-Andre Derain's on the Thames

Henri Matisse
-used flat planes and bright vivid color. He was most interested in planes.

Vassily Kandinsky
-believed that colors had a spiritual quality and that sounds could be associated with particular colors
-believed that good art was a reflection of good moral character in an artist

Cubism
-was developed as a way to show all sides of an object in a two-dimensions
-developed by Georges Braque but made most public by Picasso
-analytical Cubism worked with paint, synthetic Cubism used collaged objects.

Picasso
-Spanish artist who worked in expressionist and cubist movements

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, oil on canvas, 8'x 7'8"
-influence from African masks
-picture of prostitutes in Avignon, France done in harsh, primitive way

Three Musicians, 1921, oil on canvas, 6'7"x 7'3"
-flattened abstracted forms
-arranged in rhythmic patterns
-slight diagonals add to rhythms

Guernica, 1937, oil on canvas, 11'6"x 25'6"
-painting memorializing first saturation bombing of a civilian area
-Picasso stipulated that the painting not be returned to Spain until democratic rule was restored

Wainwright Building
St. Louis, Missouri
Modern architecture
1890
by Louis Sullivan

-Began with a new interest in materials
-steel and glass were cheap and plentiful,making them desirable building materials
Crystal Palace * London, England * Modern architecture * 1851 * by Joseph Paxton
Here's a drawing of the original "Palace" on location at the 1851 World's Fair to give you a sense of its size.

Sir Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace, 1851, London World Exposition
-first glass and steel building
-used some Classical characteristics, but articualted with "new" materials
-hated by the critic William Ruskin who believed that a building's character came from its ornament, not its base materials

Gustave Eiffel, Eiffel Tower, 1889, Paris World Exposition
-steel construction with Classical elements
-hated by Parisians whose buildings were overwhelmingly Classical in character

Henry Hobson Richardson, Marshall Fields Store, 1885, Chicago
-First skyscraper because it used a steel skeletal structure
-still used load-bearing walls and Romanesque design, but became standard for high-rise construction

Louis Sullivan, Wainright Building, 1890, St. Louis
-steel skeletal construction with emphasis on vertical design
-Sullivan modeled his design on a Greek column. The capital became the cornice, the shaft was the body of the building, and the base was the first two stories from ground level.