DES 122 Chapter 23

Realism

Realism

• Painting scenes from everyday life in a naturalistic manner

• Paintings in a realistic almost photographic way

• Contrasted with idealism

Example: The Gleaners

When does the industrial revolution start?

By the end of 18th century

What major change comes with industrial revolution?

• Mass production

• Moving from farms to cities (agricultural to industrial base)

• Steam energy

• Child labor

Proletariat

19th C. terms describing the landless working class

Bourgeoisie

19th C. term describing the privileged classes in society

The Gleaners

• Jean-François Millet

• Oil on canvas

• Example of realism

• Monumental

How are the figures in The Gleaners monumental/heroic?

• Contrast between colours of figures and background

• Two figures are foreshortened

• Their faces are hidden

The Stone Breakers

• Gustave Courbet

• Oil on canvas

Figures in The Stone Breakers

• Heroic in their humility

• Show poverty of working people

• Faces hidden which allies them with class of work rather than “normal” humans

Burial at Ornans

• Gustave Courbet

• Oil on canvas

• Big scale, so shows importance

Figures in Burial at Ornans

• Isocephaly: Heads almost at the same level, which conveys that they are all the same (deserve equal rights) despite their clothes

• Cross is above everybody

Third-Class Carriage

• Honoré Daumier

• Oil on canvas

How do we know it is third class train?

• It’s crowded and clustered

• Wooden seats

Grid around painting

To transform from small sketch to larger scale

Louis Philippe as Gargantua

• Honoré Daumier

• Lithograph

Lithography

• Made on stone (lith means stone)

• Greater production for newspaper

• Draw on flat stone with crayon, then put water on the part we don’t want to shade, then put oil (water will resist the oil)

Photography

• Camera means chamber

• Used mirror-like surface

• Silver nitrate to fix the image

Aperture

Controls the size of the opening through which light is admitted

Shutter speed

Controls how long light is admitted through a lens

Daguerreotype

• First photographic process creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated

• Reversed image

• Takes around 15 minutes

• Fixed plate

• Discovered by Louis Daguerre, improved by William fox

Who made photographic studies of motion (horse galloping)

Eadweard Muybridge

The Gross Clinic

• Thomas Eakins (American realist)

• Oil on canvas

• Light shining on surgeon head to show enlightened mind

• Realist painting

• Uses atmospheric perspective

Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe

• Édouard Manet

• Oil on canvas

• Japanese perspective: figures of the floating worlds (Ukiyo)

• Mannerist shallow spaces (woman at back of painting

Bohemian

Unconventional lifestyle of artists

Crystal Palace

• Joseph Paxton

• Cast iron, wrought iron and glass

• London

• Used for Universal Expositions

Use of iron and glass in Crystal Palace

• Less expensive

• Was able to be taken apart

• Building was prefabricated so it was taken apart and reassembled

• Iron and glass turns out to not be fireproof so building get caught on fire

What was iron used for?

• Major construction material

• cast iron was used towards end of 18th century for utilitarian structures like bridges

Eiffel tower

• Gustave Eiffel

• Wrought iron superstructure on reinforced concrete base

• Paris

• Saved from demolition because of its value as a

  radio antenna

Wainwright Building

• Louis Sullivan

• Steel frame method of construction

• St. Louis, Missouri

• Walls no longer support the building –

  suspended from the frame – called ‘curtain

  walls’

• Example of high-rise buildings

Truss / Lattice in architecture

• Frame

Marxism

Theory proclaimed by Karl Marx in 1848 that control of means of production by the proletariat will lead to a class-less society

Avant-garde

• (fore-front) innovators in art, modernists

• New and experimental ideas and methods in art, music, or literature