The impressionists: a revolution in the world of art

1. An introduction to impressionism: Hello, Hello guys. Today we're going to talk about a movement and a style that you've probably heard about before. It's very unlikely you haven't heard the word impressionist before, right? It is already in our culture and we consider it basically a classic of art. When talking impressionism nowadays, there are some words that wouldn't precisely come to mind. Revolutionary, rebels, adventurous. But it's true. Today we will discover how is it that a group of mostly Frenchman and a couple of very audacious women changed the world of art forever and opened the doors of modernity 2. The birth of a revolution: It was Louis Leroy, art critic who used the word Impressionism, considering the work a mere impression far from reality, used to carefully composed, lifelike paintings exhibited annually at the Paris Salon. Leroy was shocked by their loose brush strokes and casual composition of monet and his friends. He thought the subject matter mostly landscapes or scenes of the street people going about their everyday lives, vulgar and commonplace. In addition, he considered the manner of painting adopted to be far too sketchy and incomplete. Inspired precisely by the title of this painting he titled his hostil critic in the newspaper. The exhibit of impressionists giving name, inadvertently to the movement The only exhibition channel the painters had in the 19th century France was the Paris Salon, linked to the School of Fine Arts, which had a prestigious jury that's selected that works sent. The only problem, was that any artists trying to be "modern" or to bring a little change to the Salon was immediately rejected. So the artists were in a desperate position because being accepted to the Salon was the only real way of getting others to know your name. and having financial security. Eventually, this would come to be the only solution. The painters who gathered at the Café Guerbois around Monet decided to create an exhibition forum different from the official ones in which all independent artists could show their work. Thus arises The first exhibition of the Anonymous Society of painters, sculptures and engravers, that took place between April and May of 1874 in the rooms that the photographer Nader lend them. 3,500 visitors came, but most of them, just to laugh at the modern paintings they saw. To put only a couple of examples. In the Salon des Refusés Whistler's painting Symphony Number one, young girl and white was presented, creating a great shock as it had been already rejected by both the French Salon and the British Royal Academy. We have to consider that at first he only titled it "young girl in white", trying to avoid any type of secondary message. In his point of view, a painting should not have a narrative or moral content, but be appreciated only by itself in the same way as one listens to a musical work. It was only afterwards that he would just start adding these other titles, harmony, symphony, arrangement, Nocturne, to make this bridge with all the musical pieces that he loved and admired. It will be in this same occasion where Manet presents his most controversial work Dejeuner sur l'herbe It will be rejected by the official jury and totally censored by the critics. Despite once again receiving the ovation of the young artists who were very attracted to his work. This Manet painting is novel in that it presents nude from everyday life that is, without the need us in the past to restore to mythological figures to show female beauty. Without closing, he employed his favorite model between novel, who appears accompanied by the Duchess sculpture Ferdinand the hoof, Angus tap, the painters brother. But what is most striking is a contrast between the nakedness of the human woman and the two men who accompany her fully close it. This is the case also of the work we see to the right. In this work, the painter presents a figure of a high-class prostitute, naked, lying on a couch accompanied by her maid and a black hat. For this painting, money would be inspired by Titian is Venus. However, the novelty of Monette is again that he presents the naked figure without the support of mythology or Orientalism. It's a very contemporary scene. From here. Many others will be inspired to make other brotherly scenes that would later become famous, such as Toulouse-Lautrec. In this class, we will learn that we cannot speak of one single artist when it comes to impressionism, we have to speak of all of them as a whole, as a team who, even though they didn't necessarily work together, the world working towards the same goal of finally breaking free of what academic art was asking of them as artists. We will try to put ourselves in the shoes of the artist, trying to really see beyond what we normally see. For example, in this picture, we know, we understand what our most basic senses that we see a landscape, that we see a sunset and reflection of water. But how do we capture the color of a scene? The last, only an instant. I don't want to jump ahead. But listing that today, we are very used to the idea of freezing the moment with photography. That time photography was new for a lot of people. So the idea of freezing an instant was still something that they had to grasp their mind around. There is even one more technical issue. Until the beginning of impressionism, academic painters did not use raw pigments. The art of the painter consisted of mixing them and superimposing them in layers to nuance them and to imitate tones. Another show them only as traumatic varieties. What does this mean that in the birds have a new art, one of the most important points and we usually ignore is the role that advances in science and technique. Technology have things as the smallest, using a metal piece to touch the brush, bristles to the handle. The new brushes were much more resistant than the old ones and allow to apply intense and precise brushstrokes. In the middle of the 19th century, the first synthetic pigments met from industrial dairy vets who are marketed, such as seeing yellow, cadmium yellow, orange colored blue, ultramarine blue, crimson, and Prussian blue. The one that today we know that oxidizes it blackens on. This brings us to one of the most important points of the work of impressionist, like money, the possibility of working a plain air in the open air. Until then, artists mixed powdered pigments, sometimes also grinding them themselves with linseed oil, obtaining a desired quantity and density. Which take us to this beautiful summer's day, captured by Monet in all its glory with all the bribe and pop is complimented the wispy clouds in a clear blue sky, diluted the contours and constructed a color for rhythm with blobs of paint started from a sprinkling of puppies that these proportionately large patches in the foreground in the cave supremacy, he put on visual impression. A step towards abstraction had been taken. 3. Catching the fleeting moment: The group of the impressionists include, although this is not an exclusive list, Berthe Morisot Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet Camille Pissarro, Paul Cezanne and Felix Bracquemond Why am I not including Edouard Manet? Well, this is because he was a pre-impressionist. He's nonetheless the base of this conversation because he will be admired and followed by many of these artists we will see today. He was always the father of the other impressionists. And alongside Cezanne and Picasso, he will be one of those characters that will open modernism to the European world. The third, from left to right, we see Edgar Degas as in Edgar from Gas because he was coming from an aristocratic family. So this was the way to represent where were you coming from. This artist is not moved like Monet by a spontaneous need to interpret nature. Nor does he understand the interests that landscape arouses in painters like Pissarro are like Sisley. Like Manet 00:01:16.535 --> 00:01:20.330 The guy is a lover of Paris who enjoys wandering around Montmartre observing the inhabitants of the great city in cafes at the opera. Away from natural light. We call this the mental painting. Locked up in his workshop with his back turned to Nature. He finds himself distanced from Monet's spontaneity. He would come to say throughout the transformation, the imagination collaborates with memory and the painter reproduces what has interested him the most. That is, what is most necessary. For example, in the painting the opera orchestra, the main objective is to make the portrait of his friend But some of the Paris Opera. The ballet theme is suggested in the upper part of the painting. A theme that will end up invading the entire composition, will become one of his favorite motifs since it allows him to combine the study of form, movement, and color. We can compare his representation and handling of the characters to the way that Manet represented people. Manet who was born in 1832, was determined to be a painter. He acquired a solid training in Thomas Couture workshops. So he was very lucky about this, complemented with numerous trips abroad to see the work of the classics in situ, In the Louvre he copied the works of Titian, Rembrandt, Velazquez halls, among others, and deeply admired painters of the Spanish Baroque. You can recognize manet because his characters will mostly be in a more inoffensive pose or in the know that a portrait is being made. So many of them are looking at what would be the camera. And the themes around them are themes that probably the Paris Salon would accept. Degas On the other hand, owes his fame above all to the series of the dancers. A universe that could not leave an artists concerned with balance and movement, indifferent. The world of ballet offers Degas a vast repertoire of motifs. Dancers tying the shoe, resting, doing bar exercises, bodies, in the end, that suffer from the effort. Because unstable equilibrium, it defies the law of gravity. The dance class is a tribute to Jules Perrot the great dancer and choreographer of Romantic Ballet. Perrot leaning or his cane occupies the center of the composition and contrasts with the lightness of the dancers. Although Degas does not dissolve the form, the influence of impressionism is revealed in the use of light tones. That knows the contours. With photography Degas discovers that the eye is like a projector that can be placed at any height and in any place. Hence, the fragmented vision, the introduction of new angles, views from above or from below, close ups, as well, of course as importance granted to detail. from the Japanese prints. Degas learns also about the systematic assymetry of the composition. This is something that for the Western viewer is highly original. There are a couple of things or details that nowadays wouldn't seem like a big deal. But in that moment they were. First of all, is the dynamism of the scene Second, that for the first time in art history, most of the characters and there are many, and there are many in this scene are mostly anonymous. Third , is the fact and this is probably the most important one, is that now we understand that human nature is in fact in the moment, living in the moment, trying to freeze the instant that we're living 00:05:01.325 --> 00:05:06.110 Even though it's not something that is actually heroic. They are not after all, life-changing or life altering moments, but this is what human life is made of. 4. Impressionism, the joie de vivre: The invention in 1839 of photography, which only a decade later would already be the most popular visual art of the century was the most influential element of the visual sensibility of the time. To the extent that the academic painter Paul de La Roche, claimed in 1850 that painting was dead. Some such as the Cezanne, Basille, Monet use the new invention as a point of reference and inspiration on more than one occasion. Although some of them were reluctant to acknowledge it. The starting point of modern painting, as opposed to that of the academic styles consisted in comparison and highlighting the character of the painting of the work, distinguishing it from photography, which was already its toughest competitor. So let's look at these examples. On the left, we see the box of Renoir. The artist accentuates and evidences the painting and what it really is, that is stained cloth. The viewer, us as a viewer, no longer see this scene as through the window, we have to stop and consider the painting also a surface. on the other side to the right, and without resorting to any sentimentalism or moral comment. Degas confronts us through these zig zag composition with this drunken and marginalized and lonely figures. Locked, despite their closeness to other human beings, in their own solitude. Instead of that velvety surface defended by the academic paintings. The impressionists make visible loose brush strokes with a lot of impasto to create relief or so diluted that the weave of the canvas is noticeable. In any case, exhibiting the materiality of the surface. In defense of visual reality, the impressionists discover that nature is alive and changing. Shadows are transformed They are reflected by the nuances of the environment. Pure colors don't exist. They are completely influenced by the chromatic environment. The light is not a static, but mutable and wavering. Had you ever really noticed this in your surroundings? The birth of a new class, the bourgeois was another consequence of the Industrial Revolution. Most of the impressionists, like many of their clients, belonged to the bourgeois families. The only exceptions were Monet and Renoir who we see in this image, it is a little bit ironic that it was precisely him who would become the most hedonistic impressionist, who appreciated the enjoyment of life in the Paris of his time. The rest of our artists came from aristocratic families. For example, with magistrate parents or businessmen, merchants, landlord's, real estate of speculators. In the end, they were part of a prosperous France, which at the time had expanded an empire in Africa and India, China. The Impressionist period between 1875 and 1914 coincides with this nostalgic Belle Epoque That moment when Paris leaves any rural trace to become the great city we know the capital undergoes a complete transformation thanks to Napoleon III and the Baron Hausman who promoted the greatest urban reform. You could see new water systems, sewers that eliminated the bad smells from the street and reduced pandemics. The construction of new stations and markets. Large private residences, spectacular public buildings long boulevards, public parks, and outdoor cafes and restaurants. The favorite of these establishments for our group of artists. The Moulin de la Gallette in a Montmartre still on the outskirts of the city with a rural air that it would soon lose. But where they enjoyed continuous gatherings and a festive atmosphere where many of their most important paintings would see the light. Many of the impressionists, especially Renoir would be criticised harshly because many of their paintings would seem inoffensive or soft. And when Renoir received this critics he said, yes, we are trying to find beauty and show beauty and show our lives in the river in the cafés with our friends. And yes, that life is happy and pretty. Yes, Pretty. Their main goal after all wasn't having offensive or dark themes, but to have a revolutionary technique. And talking precisely about technique. What role the drawing has in this process? Drawing was discarded by many of the impressionist who consider it a hindrance of academicism. They preferred to paint directly on Canvas. Degas on the other side thought the drawing was the way of really apprehending reality. He said, It is not the form, it is the way we see the form. For example, in the singer with the glove. The point of view chosen for this close-up is that of the spectator below the schematization of lines and the cartoonish air, as well as the theme of the globe, will be resources that Toulouse-Lautrec will use. in his posters, opening the door of the technique of the advertisement. 5. The role of photography in the world of art: Another revolutionary artist of this time was Berthe Morrison. She began to develop a kind of visual shorthand of quick, short strokes to paint what was in front of her being objects or people. She captured the movement and light by tracing discontinuous lines with the surface of the brush, rapid lines with the tip of the brush, and then scratching the paint with the handle. None of her impressionist colleagues had work in such experimental way. How did she get to develop such an authentic style? She had the luck in air quotes of not attending any type of school or academia. She painted basically what she saw and she was even banned from meeting at the big Guerbois café still she understood impressionism better than anyone. By not being allowed to enter schools, Her painting was never impregnated with the academicism that her colleagues were trying to undo. Her style was much more unique than any of the other painters. So yes, she would be criticised and ridiculed as being too feminine. But there were some people who were trying to help her and who recognized her talent. One of them was Edouard Manet, who we saw was the first pre Impressionists. And she would eventually end up marrying his brother Eugene. He helped her get into the circle even though Morisot was working at a time when women were not allowed to take Anatomy Lessons for fear they would be sullied in impure thoughts. Women were believed to lack the abstracting powers necessary to turn nakedness into nudes. Also, being a woman in a bourgeois family. She was constrained to the themes around her, such as her house, the park, her husband, her daughter. She worked all her life, participated in all the impressionist exhibitions except one. And it was because Julie, her daughter had just been born. She took impressionism to the United States in the American Art Association and sold more paintings than Monet Sisley or Pissarro, even achieving individual exhibitions. Unfortunately, the patriarchal system didn't want a woman to receive the recognition she deserved. And she was relegated to a female artist because of her homey theme. As were many of her colleagues such as Mary Cassat And Eva Gonzalez. today, although she is known as a great lady of painting. So Mary Cassat was one of the other female artists that were the highest quality of work and who if she were not a woman, we would be talking about her in the museums at the level of any of of her fellow impressionist friends. Mary Cassat is considered the first American impressionist. She was part of the group from the beginning and enthusiastically joined their cause. She did not attend just as Morisot meetings in the cafés but she met with them in private and in exhibitions. Degas became her great ally. He was one of the first to help her breakthrough these frontiers of communication between American art and what Europe was expecting to see. her work is relevant not only because her technique is also revolutionary, but because of the fact that she was very cynical and she tried to work as picking current affairs in her work, even though we still see some of the themes that were considered homey. But Cassat was a feminist and she actively supported women's suffrage, fighting for equality. And fighting to gain the freedom and the right to vote for women. Her friend, Degas, was becoming progressively blind as he grew older. So eventually he started working more and more in sculptures in wax. That 14-year-old little dancer is a sculptor created by him in 1881 and represents the young dancer student named Marie The sculptor was originally made of wax and was cast in bronze only in 1922. Despite experiencing and new boom at the time, wax was a rare material selection for the time. In addition to this, the sculpture is dressed in a cotton skirt and a headband and rests on a wooden base. When the little dancer was exhibited in Paris during the sixth impressionist exhibition of 1881. It received mixed but mostly negative reviews. Most critics were outraged by the piece. They considered it ugly, grotesque primitive. These were just some of the words that they used. So of course, heartbroken Degas decided to never show again a work he made in wax. Going against his will, the sculptors heirs decided to empty 27 of his statues into bronze. That's why there is this time gap of 40 years between the making of the pieces, and The bronze statues, 69 original sculptures in wax and other materials survive the casting process. So now we can see, even though many of the artists were very different in style and in theme, they were all very compromised with the technique of impressionism. And Manet, Being the first one, shows a great consistency. Throughout his work. This work is closer to the end of his life, but we see themes that we've seen before. in Him. A portrait, a relation of one-on-one with a person that is being depicted. In this case, there are some technical issues that have been criticised before, but that he always said Were on purpose. For example, the scale and position of the legs of the trapezist upper left. And the reflection that we see, even though we see the person upfront, the reflection is kind of tilted. Other impressionists, in the other hand, will show more fleeting moments and above all, more anonymous. This pastel painting is one of a large collection where we see similar figures performing similar gestures. Here after wetting this punch, the woman bends down and leaning on one hand, raises the other to wash her back. Let's try to go beyond the mere everyday scene where we break into the intimacy of the woman. How do you analyze the strength, the balance of the posture? How do you understand the planes of the painting? Strange erotism emanates from the nudes, but it is not the expression of desire in its usual sense. In Degas there is obsession to suggest movement. Always with the desire of permanence, like Monet, he does not pursue painting What is fleeting, what is transitory, but rather stopping the gesture that synthesizes and summarizes all gestures. He would say, nothing in art should seem like an accident, not even movement. All of these pieces go hand in hand with a certain node on modernity. We have to consider that now painters didn't actually need to show veracity, so they could actually show emotion and a range of other concepts through their work. Also, they had the possibility of the connection with the Eastern world. It was a first time, for example, that block printing was brought from Japan. Artists such as Hokusai or known for the first time. They were. In the end, exciting times. Imagine how many things were being invented and discovered. when Degas accompanies Manet to the races. A diversion very fashionable during the reign of Napoleon III He's not interested in the mundane spectacle, but in the graceful movement of the horses. The tension before the race or even the colors of the courses clothings, And the jokeys as the story goes, when Muybridge went with his friends to the races they couldn't figure out if there was a moment in which the horses stop touching the floor completely. And so he started experimenting with photography with a faster speed because usually people had to sit for hours to get a portrait done. So this is basically the birth of what would become cinema. And as you see, all art start merging together. 6. The arrival of the modern world: All this to say that the modern world was already here. Probably many of our grandparents were already born. Kandinsky, who would come to be one of the most important abstract and modern artists of the 20th century. Eventually said that he was greatly inspired by Monet's Haystacks, not by the theme, but by the musical rhythm of his color. They would become a real revelation to him and an important milestone or his path to abstraction. He would say it is color and form what triggers an emotional response and not the objects, the haystacks themselves. It is as if there is no subject in the painting, only light and atmosphere. When the term impressionist was accepted around 1887, a critic linked to the group, proposed an even broader definition that applies to Sisley's series of work. Treat any subject by the tones and not by the subject itself. Here is what distinguishes Impressionists from all other painters. He painted 15 or so paintings of these village church at various times of day and in different seasons. The one in display here was executed on a fine, evening in 1894. Based on the second floor of a house Sisley projected his visual impressions directly onto Canvas. The clear, bold colors applied in small strokes capture the fleeting effects of the evening light. Despite the spontaneity of this vision. In these paintings, we also find the architectonic rigor and search of depth that characterized all the painter's composition. Sisley was as many others in the group, very lucky. He was born in Paris, the son of a wealthy English merchant who sent him to London at the age of 18 to begin his commercial studies. But the young man nevertheless devoted himself to studying English painting, especially paintings by Constable and Turner. determined to make a living from painting. Sisley returned to Paris in 1862, and his family supported him and encouraged him to study arts. The building is here with Sisley as much as with Monet Not more than a background, an excuse to show the authentic protagonist of the composition: The power of the painting to represent the dynamic quality of the light and atmosphere capable of giving life to something as stoney and inanimate as an imposing facade of the church or cathedral. When Monet painted that Rouen Cathedral series, that it was a much larger series of 40 paintings. made in a span between 1892-1894, he had long since been impressed by the way light inparts to a subject a distinctly different character at different times of the day and the year. And as atmospheric conditions change. For monet The effects of light on a subject became as important as the subject itself. This works are an attempt to illustrate the importance of light in our perception at any given time and place. By focusing on the same subject through a whole series of paintings, Monet was able to concentrate on recording visual sensations themselves. Task was big challenge. Monet found that the thing that he was set out to painting ,light, was an almost impossible thing to capture because of its ever-changing nature and its extreme subtlety. By his ability to capture the essence of a scene quickly, then finishing it later using a sketch combined with his memory of this scene. For this paintings, he used thick layers of richly texture paint, expressive of the intricate nature of the subject. This series would come to be known as the climax of impressionism. Next time you're in front of a impressionist painting. No matter the author or the time it was made in 00:04:02.270 --> 00:04:05.524 Consider seeing beyond the landscape or beyond the character that is portrayed. Try to get to the feeling and the essence that the painter was trying to convey, try to understand his process of decision-making of the position au plein air of the time of day, the atmospheric conditions, every little thing, as in many other themes that we will talk about in the history of art, is a decision. Monet will take this idea of this series to the extreme, where he painted approximately 250 Canvases referring to water lilies and his garden of oriental inspiration. in Giverny, a work of art in and of itself that you can still visit only 20 minutes from Paris. Today his home, hosts the Monet foundation and botanical garden, which he worked with the same care and fascination as the paintings themselves. Monet planted the water lilies before he painted them. He organized his property at Giverny as though it were a huge painting. Thanks to small army of gardeners. He diverted the river. Planted water lilies, exotic flowers, weeping willow trees, and other exotic plants. He seeded the pond and added enclosures with white chickens and ducks and faisans Nature was recomposed by the artist and it began to resemble his art He would say, my finest masterpiece is my garden. He would also spend a lot of money in these bulbs and young seedlings. The garden covers an area of 15 hectares, including both the botanical collection, the local vegetation, and a small nursery of rare species. on april 26 1974 The Property was inscribing the title of historical monuments. The entrance, the garden, the workshop, the pavilion. And it was also listed as Jardin remarkable remarkable garden In 1976. The garden itself brought more happiness to monet, probably that most of his life's work. These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession. Monet wrote And August 198, this is beyond the streght of an old man. And yet I want to express what I feel. I have destroyed some of the canvases. I begin once again. I hope something will come of all these effort Oh, if this effort brought really some change and some life to him. after the death of his wife, he comes back to this canvases and he makes some radical changes. He changes the scale of the canvases now they are monumental in scale. And he also changes the palette using brilliant spots of color to suggest the flowers. His avant garde approach. And his extraordinary use of point and color began the trail for subsequent art movements. His contemporary Paul Cezanne became affiliated with post-impressionism. Henri Matisse, who had studied Monet became one of the first expressionist artists. I'll leave you here precisely this example that will bring us to our next lesson to Cezanne is working with the aesthetics his predecessors had established very light color palettes and treatment of light. In The bathers He's almost looking at landscape as through the lens of an architect. He's all about form and geometry. And it's very structural. He's trained to move from impression to a more logical, more analytical architectural eye. what he took was mostly the process of going outside and capturing the light. But the difference between Cezanne and impressionism is that he increased the flatten enough space. He used the color palette of impressionists, but distorted it to change the concept of time and moment. Reorienting this pace as he's pushing through it. Impressionism was a visual revolt. The very first renegade artists flowing against the system. They were painting life as it was. It's all about observing nature, scrutinizing life as it is, as it reflects on objects. By the end of the Impressionist period, artists felt liberated from strict rules on competition, subject matter, and technique. They no longer depended on opinion of the salon. Artists nowadays are free to paint what they want to experiment with new technology and pursue their own ideas and talent. And most of it is thanks to the Impressionists. Thank you very much for being here, for sharing your time with me and for letting me talk on and on about these themes that I am so passionate about. I hope you are too. And if you have any questions, if you have any comments, I'll be glad to discuss them. You know where to find me. Thank you. See you next time. 7. Impressionists style Class Project: Although in one single movement, every artist contributed in style to what became the Impressionist movement. According to each artist's characteristics and traits, try to identify the author of the pieces that I show here in the class document below. Please share your results and comments as a class project, And I will make sure to check it out and answer any question that you may have. Thank you for being here, for watching this art history lesson and see you next time.