Toward the Modern Era: 1840-1914

The Growing Unrest

• Belle époque: beautiful age• But also a growing frustration,

restlessness– Economic disparity, resentment– Population growth, urban alienation– Capitalism vs. Socialism– Suffrage Movement– Loss of religious security

Ludwig Meidner

“Ich und die Stadt” (1913)

(I and the city)

What emotion is being expressed here? How do you know?

Kathy Kollwitz’s realist etching, “March of the Weavers” (1897).What is being represented here?

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s Philosophy

• Nihilism; argued that the idea of “God is dead”

• Critic of judeo-Christian culture, nationalism, and all other “surrogate gods”

• Asserts will to Power• Poses concept of the

Übermensch (Superman—a Caesar with Christ’s soul)

New Movements in the Visual Arts

The new realism of impressionismand the turn toward abstraction

• Édouard Manet (1832-1883)– Break from classical tradition– Assumes view of the artist; shows us how

he sees his subjects

Look at the representation of depth here. Do you notice anything interesting or odd?

–Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) (1863)

Compare and contrast the figure and bottles in the foreground with the reflection in the mirror. How are they different? A Bar at the Folies-Bergére (1882)

New Movements in the Visual Arts

Impressionism• Realism of light, color

– Fidelity to visual perception, “innocent eye”– Devotion to naturalism; how things ‘really’ look in

nature– Realism of light and color– Records all colors without trying to blend them

together

• Claude Monet (1840-1926): created the style of impression with the following revolutionary, controversial painting….

Impression: Sunrise (1872)

–Red Boats at Argenteuil (1875)

New Movements in the Visual Arts

Impressionism

• Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)– Beauty of the world, happy activity– Women as symbols of life– Le Moulin de la Galette (1876)

• Edgar Degas (1834-1917)– Intimate moments as universal experience– Psychological penetration– “Keyhole visions”

How does Renoir’s painting combine realism and impressionism? Le Moulin de la Galette (1876)

Degas’s “The Rehearsal” (1874). Again, how does this differ from classical and romantic art? What does it make ballet look like?

How do Degas’s

nudes differ from the classical

nudes of the Renaissance?

Degas looked to represent the ordinary

in his nudes.

The artist assumes odd

angles to give the sense of his subjects

being spied-on

New Movements in the Visual Arts

Post-Impressionism

• Rejection of Impressionism• Personal artistic styles that break with

both tradition of classical idealism and with impressionism; every artist is working in his own unique style with his own unique techniques– Georges Pierre Seurat (1859-1891)– Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

Seurat’s pointillist technique

Seurat’s pointillism up close

Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884-1886); Seurat’s unique, mathematical pointillist technique produces a rather unique looking image.

Gauguin’s new study’s of everyday life

And his interest in the exotic

New Movements in the Visual Arts

Post-Impressionism• Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)

– Impose order on nature; does not represent things either as they really look or as they ideally should be

– Priority of abstract considerations; nature as fundamentally geometrical

– Mont Sainte-Victoire (1904-1906)

• van Gogh’s Starry Night (1889)– Autobiographical, pessimistic art– Social, spiritual alienation

A Cezanne still life; geometry and perspective are subtly modified to suit artist’s personal sense of order.

One of Cezanne’s many paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire. What is the influence of impressionism here?

What kinds of shapes does Cezanne use here to impose order on nature?

Van Gogh’s self portrait.

What is the first thing you notice?What is its effect?

What do you think the artist is trying to communicate about himself?

Starry Night. What is Van Gogh communicating about the stars and the night?

New Movements in the Visual Arts

Fauvism

• “Les Fauves”: the wild beasts of france

• Loss of traditional values of color, form

• Distortion of natural relationships

• Henri Matisse, The Red Studio (1911)

How is Matisse’s The Red Studio an example of Fauvism?

Matisse’s “The Joy of Life” (1906). What makes things look so joyful here? How is this different from classical realism and impressionsim?

New Movements in the Visual Arts

Expressionism

• Alarm and hysteria

• Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893)– Autobiographical, social, psychological

• Die Brücke (The Bridge), Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)– Emotional impact, alienation and loneliness– Heckel (1883-1970), Nolde (1867-1956)

What is being expressed here in Edvard Munch’sThe Scream (1893)?

An Erich Heckel expressionist woodcut

What emotion is being produced here?

Emil Nolde’s “Die Sünderin (Christus und die Sünderin)” (1926)

Nolde’s “Pentecost.” How is this different from the many images of the pentecost found on medieval churches?

New Subjects for LiteraturePsychological Insights in the Novel

• Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)– Irony and satire, passivity and emptiness

• Marcel Proust (1871-1922)– Remembrance of Things Past– Evocation of memory– Stream of consciousness style

New Subjects for LiteraturePsychological Insights in the Novel

• Nature of individual existences– The subconscious and human behavior

• Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)– Concern for psychological truth– Human suffering, salvation– Crime and Punishment

Responses to A Changing Society:The Role of Women

• Family life, society at large– Right to vote, marriage ties

• Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879)– Criticism of anti-feminist social conventions

• Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899)– Sexuality as liberation from oppression