Ukio-e - Impressionism -

Postimpressionism (pp. 352-353;

358-360; 363-368; 371-372; 374-375)

Manet:

art as criticism

deliberate formal

inconsistency

Japanese ukio-e influence:

Haronubu, Hokusai

Monet: Impressionism and

modernity

Renoir: painting the Parisian

cafes

Post-impressionism:

Van Gogh:

subjectivity/expressionism

Cezanne: rethinking the

structure of things

SHARP DIVISION OF

TWO AREAS: BLACK

AND WHITE

is the painting about

showing or hiding?

irritating

patchwork of

different

languages:

against the

academic

principle of

coherence

Olympia’s body is flat

with NO chiaroscuro +

uninterrupted contour

line (like in JAPANESE

prints)

Manet, Olympia, 1863, oil on

canvas

Flowers’ loose

brushwork

(ideal

beginning of

impressionism)

Head and

hands are

realistically

shadowed and

tri-dimensional

Haronubu, Evening Bell at the Clock,

from Eight views of the Parlor series,

ca. 1765. Woodblock print

European and American

art of were influenced by

the arrival on the market of

Japanese woodblock prints

called ukio-e in the late

1850s

Formal analysis:

-black outlines

-distinct color areas

- Flatness (no focal point,

no volumes, no source of

light, no shadow)

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Flatness has

been proposed by

the contemporary

Japanese artist

Takashi

Murakami

As the

quintessential

quality of

Japanese art from

then onward

(manga, anime)

Takashi Murakami, still from

anime, 2005

Superflat

Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, from

Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series, ca.

1826-33, woodblock print oban, ink and colors

on paper

Hokusai (1760-1849) is

the most famous ukio-e

artist

This image is part of a

series entitled Thirty-Six

Views of Mount Fuji

series

Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, from

Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series, ca.

1826-33, woodblock print oban, ink and colors

on paper

The rising of a wave

enframes the view of the

Mount Fuji

The men in the skiff are

dwarfed by the clawing

wave

The sense of immediate

danger contrasts with the

calm presence of the

mountain in the background

The word ukio-e means

“pictures of the floating

world”:

Floating is used in the

Buddhist sense of

something that is

evanescent:

Everyday life is represented

as transitory

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT

CONCEPT FOR

IMPRESSSIONIST

ARTISTS

Monet, Impression: Sunrise,1872, oil on canvas

Impression: Sunrise was

exhibited at the first

Impressionist show in 1874

A hostile critic applied the

label “impressionism”

a term used before in relation

to SKETCHES

Monet, Impression: Sunrise,1872, oil on canvas

Against

academic idea

of perfectly

refined

paintings:

the

brushstrokes

are visible

(Monet does

not blend the

pigment to

create smooth

tonal

gradations)

There is no

drawing, no

chiaroscuro, no

detail

Monet, Impression: Sunrise,1872, oil on canvas

Two main points:

1) the artist acknowledges

the paint and the canvas

surface:

beginning of a formal

research on the act of

painting itself, that would

bring to ABSTRACTION

Monet, Impression: Sunrise,1872, oil on canvas

2) the lack of clarity and

definition corresponds to:

speed = modernity

Charles Baudelaire (one

of the first to write positive

criticism to impressionist

artists) wrote:

“Modernity is the

transitory, the fugitive,

the contingent”

Monet, Impression: Sunrise,1872, oil on canvas

Subject matter: people

going to work at

sunrise

time of nature vs. time

of humans vs. time of

industry

Series of the Rouen cathedral represented at

different hours of the day and atmospheric

conditions

representation of the unrepeatable contingency

between:

- the time of History,

- the continuous changing of the present,

-and the inner time of the viewer

unrepeatable encounter of subjective and

objective contingencies

Monet, series of Rouen

Cathedral: The Portal,

ca. 1894, oil on canvas

Another facet of the industrialized Paris,

that the Impressionists represented in a

new way, was the leisure activities of its

inhabitants

Free time is also a product of the new

capitalistic society: with the advent of set

working hours, people’s schedules became

more regimented, allowing them to plan

their favorite pastimes

This is the period when Paris became the

world capital of fun, with café-concerts,

opera, ballet etc.

Renoir, Le Moulin de la

Galette, 1876, oil on

canvas

Here Renoir represents a popular dance

hall

The great challenge of this painting is to

render and atmosphere made of such

invisible elements as sounds (music,

laughter, and tinkling glasses) movement

(people dancing), and social rituals (flirting,

drinking, seeing, and being seen)

Renoir successfully obtains this effect by

dappling the scene with sunlight filtered

through the trees

Renoir, Le Moulin de la

Galette, 1876, oil on

canvas

Dancing with the figures, this light

produces a floating and fleeting effect

Figures are placed casually (cut by the

edges, on the foreground a guy seen from

the back), giving the viewer the impression

of beeing part of the scene

There is no line that define and close, but

rather everithing is painted with a frayed

brushstroke that connect everything and

everybody in an waving wholeRenoir, Le Moulin de la

Galette, 1876, oil on

canvas

Post-Impressionism

the Impressionists

represent the interaction

between the viewer’s

subjectivity and the

objectivity of the observed

things

Post-impressionism is the

destruction of such

interaction

Van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889,

oil on canvas, MoMA

Van Gogh represented in

his canvases his own

emotional state

This is NOT the

representation of an

objective real view

The landscape is filtered

through the artist

subjectivity

The painting is not about

the landscape, but about

the artist’s vision

through a starry night

he communicates his

intuition and emotion

about the vastness of

the universe,

perceived as an

immense living

organism

Van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889,

oil on canvas, MoMA

Van Gogh acknowledges

for the first time the fact

that each individual sees

things differently

This extreme subjectivity

implies an impossibility of

communication

that Van Gogh desperately

tried to overcome through

his painting:

His violent undulating

brushstrokes makes this

vision alive

shapes and colors of things

is changed or exaggerated

according to the

EXPRESSIVE needs of the

artist

Van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889,

oil on canvas, MoMA

Van Gogh is considered the

beginner of the

EXPRESSIONIST

movement,

Expressionism: a style of

painting, music, or drama in which

the artist or writer seeks to express

emotional experience

rather than impressions

of the external world

Expressionists characteristically

reject traditional ideas of beauty or

harmony and use distortion,

exaggeration, and other

non-naturalistic devices

in order to emphasize and

express the inner world

of emotion

Cezanne Was interested in the

structural quality of

things

Beyond their superficial

impression

Still Life with Basket of Apples

is a case in point

He focused on the solidity of certain

things (napkin with angular folds and

pockets of shadows)

And reduced other

parts to their

elementary

geometric shapes

(the apple is a circle)

Cezanne, Still

Life with Basket

of Apples, oil on

canvas, 1890

He decomposed

visual perception

into a combination

of pure colors:

he modeled the fruit

with pure, unmixed

colors, juxtaposing

yellow, green, and

red brushstrokes

What is radical in

C. is his challenge

of the most basic

rules of Western

painting

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the most elementary of the

accepted rules of

composition and

perspective are questioned

here:

These visual ‘inaccuracies’

reveal the MOVING

VIEWPOINT of the artist

relative to the objects being

painted

the table is seen from

lower or higher, closer or

farther viewpoints

the bottle’s axis leans

to one side,

And it offers a

distinctive contour

on each side

The edges of the table are

drawn inconsistently

Cezanne, Still

Life with Basket

of Apples, oil on

canvas, 1890