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From Romanticism to Naturalism:Political, Social, and Cultural Realism
Week 6 – Lecture 1
19 February 2008
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A) Social Causes: Invention of Working ClassA new fascination with (lower-class) “reality”
B) Socio-Political Causes: Revolutions of 1830 and 1848
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)
Victor Hugo
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1848 Socialists vs. Liberals
Ernest Meissonier, Barricade in the Rue De La Mortellerie,
June 1848 (Memory of Civil War) [1849]
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Romanticism
Realism
Courbet, The Stonebreakers 1849: Laborers as heroic subject-matterNB: massive canvases usually reserved for gods, monarchs, heros, classical subjects
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“Above all, the art of painting can only consist of the representation of objects which are visible and tangible for the artist . . . .
“…I maintain, in addition, that painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things…It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects; an object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.”
--- Gustave Courbet, Letter to Courrier du dimanche (25 December 1861)
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“an object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.”
KEY: Realism is a political weapon – it delegitimates neo-classicism, romanticism, religious art as being “UN-real” --- i.e., “falsifying” or “distorting” reality
… but before you buy Courbet’s rhetoric about “reality” too quickly….
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Piet Mondrian,
Composition II (1929)
“an object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.”
--Courbet (1861)
Byzantine (8th c.) : flat/hieratic Mondrian (20th c.) flat/abstract
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History does not move in a straight line…
For “realist” novel in English, think of Charles Dickens: e.g., Hard Times, Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, etc.
Realist novel in France begins with Balzac… ultimate expression is Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary
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Marx + Darwin: The world is a harsh world of competition and survival of the fittest
{“Home” = safe warm refuge}
NB: We are far from Newton!!!
Charles Darwin:
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of FavouredRaces in the Struggle for Life [1859]
HEREDITY
Charles Darwin:
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of FavouredRaces in the Struggle for Life [1859]
Elected November 1860
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“Hardware” [population] changed;“Software” [mentalities] stayed same
Result:Cholera epidemics
• Cholera: – spread through
contaminated water
• 1830s: beginning of modern epidemics:– France: 100K;– Britain: 50K; – Russia: 238K
• 1854: 150K in France alone
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Baron von Haussmann’s aqueducts bring fresh water into Paris (1850s)NB: SOFTWARE CATCHES UP WITH HARDWARE INVENTS NEW H.W.!!!
“Cholera”complains to Baron von Haussmann that the Water / Sewer system has put him out of work
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Paris Sewer System Pleasure Cruises!Waste management / clean water longer life expectancies
More sewer pleasure cruise… notice all fresh water!
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1858-1864
Using steam shovels, 35-car trains were loaded in ten-minute intervals for trips from granite quarries in suburban Needham to the Back Bay.
Three trains ran on the tracks, each making 25 trips a day.
Between 1858 and 1864, the state filled 53 acres of the Back Bayusing this train-and-steam-shovel system.
1630
1890
http://www.iboston.org/rg/backbayImap_1890.htm
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Naturalism as late form of realism
= a new obsession
with HEREDITY
and with deterministic
“Nature”
Biology and passing on
“healthy blood”
Cf. Bourgeois family /
“home” / “procreation”
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Literary Naturalism: Nature/Fate/Society crush human beingsAnti-Romantic: Nothing noble about being crushed
Emile Zola Edith Wharton
Diorama of Emile Zola’s novel Germinal at Musée Grevin
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FATE!!!
DESTINY!!!
INEVITABILITY!!!
NECESSITY!!!
INEXORABILITY!!!
Es muß sein!!!
“FATALISM + PROGRESS” = “The 19TH-C. Heavenly Twins”…
--- Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner
Romanticism
Naturalism
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Technological: photography / press
The mystery of the girl’s body foundon the rue du Vert-Bois
[1886]
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Naturalist painting: tries to imitate precision of detail /
verisimilitude of photography
Christian Krohg,The Sick Girl [1880-81]
Late 19th-c. “Realism” or “naturalism”
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III. “End of the Soul”:
Psychology
Anthropology
Sociology
PHRENOLOGY [Craniology = head]:Criminality / Race / Degeneration written on the body
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• “...he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like callipersand got the dimensions back and front and every way…
• “I always ask leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those going out there [i.e., into the heart of darkness]…” And when they come back? “Oh, I never see them… the changes take place inside, you know.”
• “‘Ever any madness in your family?’ he asked…”
Note fascination in Spectacular Realities with colonial “primitives”
Anthropo - Sociology
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Note intersections of criminality / madness / race
“Hysteria” diagnosis <--- uterus: women [mostly] acting “ab-normal”
Finding bodily causes for symptoms of depression e.g.,
uncontrollable crying, rage, religious fervor, shopping, kleptomania
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Lemonnier, The Hysteric (1885)
“Feminization of Religion”
Jean-Martin Charcot [and hypnotized patient]at the Salpêtrière neurological clinic, Paris
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Charcot’s “crucified” position: from his “iconography of the hysteric”
Charcot’s “supplication” position
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Augustine demonstrates “supplication” position
Iconography of the hysteric:Attitude de supplication
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Immaculate Conception
8 December 1854
Anti-naturalist dogma
[Darwin: 1859]
Iconography of the hysteric:Attitude de crucifiement