DES 122 Chapter 24

Impressionism

• Preferred genre subjects, leisure activities, entertainment, landscape, cityscape

• Based on the practice of painting out of doors and spontaneously 'on the spot' rather than in a studio from sketches

• Influence of Japanese woodblock prints, photography and the psychology of perception

• The formal opposite of blurred edges—the silhouette—

  is also an important feature of the Impressionist style.

Ukiyo-e

Japanese woodblock tradition

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere

• Edouard Manet

• Colore not designio

• Bit smoky from all the cigarettes

Nature of the space A Bar at the Folies-Bergere

• Clustered in a way

• Very large space

• People in front of her (reflected on mirror behind lady)

• Two levels

• Shallow space

Cultural commentary being made (A Bar at the Folies-Bergere)

What’s in the mirror is not real in a way

Brushwork

Individualistic way of applying paint

Moulin de la Galette

• Pierre-Auguste Renoir

• Oil on canvas

• Montmartre dance hall but in the courtyard

Absinthe

• Edgar Degas

• Oil on canvas

• Slice of life

• Absinthe means 70% alcohol, popular among bohemians

Dancer with a Bouquet, Bowing

• Edgar Degas

• Chalk pastels & gouache

• The flat orange triangles reflect the influence of

  Japanese prints

The Boating Party

• Mary Cassat

• Oil on canvas

• Foreshortening of the child’s face and the arm and legs of the rower

• Compressed space

Impression: Sunrise

• Claude Monet

• Oil on canvas

• Term Impressionism derived from a critic’s negative view of painting

• Critic said work unfinished in appearance

Broken color technique

To show that the clear circle of orange sun is “broken” into individual brushstrokes when reflected in the water. The same is true of the dark, silhouetted boat.

Rouen Cathedral

• Claude Monet

• Oil on canvas

• West Façade, Sunlight

The thinker

• Auguste Rodin

• Bronze

How did Auguste Rodin make his sculptures?

• Rodin built up forms in clay or wax before casting them

• His characteristic medium was bronze, but he also made casts of plaster

Casting

Pouring a metal sculpture from a clay or plaster model

Maquette

A small sketch sculpture

Why does he do fragmented bodies

He believed that it depicts the true essence of humanity

Torso

Incomplete sculpture of human body

Balzac

• Auguste Rodin

• Plaster version (dynamic, experimental: giving

  the appearance of being unfinished)

• Commission from the French Society of Men of Letters but rejected

Honoré de Balzac

• Novelist Wrote a lot

• Novels on french life

Malleable

Can be easily shaped, like clay

Patina

Corroded layer on bronze or copper

Connoisseur

Expert, someone who appreciates art

Salon des Refusés

First authorized exhibition of artwork that had not been accepted into the official Salon in Paris (1863)