Nothing much has happened. Almost finished my English paper. ^^ I'm going to post it up now.
In the midst of the warring country of France, a small group of artists go together and unknowingly changed the art world with Impressionistic art. In the late 1860’s to the 1880’s, four painters started what would later become known as Impressionism - Claude Monet, Frédérick Bazille, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. These four brilliant men, still students at the time, broke away from the regular Salon work, and working with Edouard Manet developed this art form which was not accepted at the time.
Impressionism started during the Franco-Prussian War, in which Emperor Napoleon III was rebuilding Paris. The Académie des beaux-arts, or the Academy of Fine Arts, took over what was acceptable art. The only acceptable art at the time was those depicting Historical acts, Biblical themes, or Portraits in the French Style. French art was dominated by the Académie, where they regulated what kinds of art, what it should look like, and where you are allowed to paint. All artists were expected to go to the Académie to learn the “correct” way to paint.
Impressionism was based almost solely on landscapes and still lives, which were unacceptable at the time. Using broad, uneven strokes were also the way of the Impressionists. They tried to capture the feeling, the atmosphere, of the moment in time that they’re painting. Painting en plein-air, out of doors, helped them do this. This technique was drastically looked down upon, as the Académie stated that you must paint in a studio. These simple habits of the Impressionists soon brought about even more changes in the late 1800’s.
With new little boutiques and other resting areas arising in Paris, Monet, Sisley, Bazille, and Renoir met more frequently to discuss they’re failures in the Salon de Paris, ran by the Académie. Emperor Napoleon III allowed these artists whose works were rejected time and time again to showcase them in their own Salon. They set up the Salon des Refusés, or the Salon of the Refused. Originally opened up with the quartet, the Salon eventually grew to have a diverse bunch of artists, including Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, and Armand Guillaumin. This Salon had four exhibitions in the 1800’s, in ’63, ’74, ‘75, and 1886. In the exhibit of ’74, Monet submitted a piece called Impression, Sunrise, which was how the group got they’re name. Louis Leroy, a comic and newspaper writer, poked fun at the Salon, using Monet’s work, stating that it was just an impression of a seascape, and that wallpaper in its beginnings are more finished. His description fits quite well, because Impressionists did just that. They tried to get just the right impression of the moment. But Leroy’s comment was one of the milder ones that they received. “In newspaper cartoons, pregnant women were warned not to enter an Impressionist art exhibition because of the danger of a miscarriage” (YannisStavrou).
The camera had just came out a few years before, and many of these artists thought that “painting needed to be rescued from competition with the camera” (Janson, Kerman, 174). Because of this, the Impressionist art was set up almost like a photograph, very candid. The subjects range from a view of a church, to seascapes, to even ladies combing their hair after a bath. Most of their work, however was done out of doors, which is a whole new approach that was looked down upon severely. All work done previously was done in the studio. Even if it was done out of doors, it was finished up in the studio. But in Impressionism, it is important that “not only that the painter study the subject carefully out of doors, but that notations be made of the subject at different hours of the day” (Châtelet, 15). This can be seen in Monet’s series of haystacks, churches, and his final works of the Japanese gardens at his house. “At their time, Impressionist works appeared to be so outrageously modern, that it took their contemporaries more than thirty years to finally admit them – if not to like them” (Impressionniste).
By looking at paintings such as “By the Sea” by Renoir, “A Woman Ironing” by Degas, or “The Sainte-Victoire Mountain” by Cezanne it is impossible to tell that they are from the same movement as the styles differ from each other. But all of the artists had similar techniques that they used. Besides painting en plein-air, the group used short, fast strokes in wet paint. Doing this caused the viewer to see the trail of the paintbrush and helped them to see the emotion that they were trying to portray. This effect also makes the artists able to play with the light more, because these unusual brush strokes make the painting ‘3-D’. Impressionists also used only unmixed, or pure, colors. All of the mixing was done on the canvas, or even no mixing at all. For no mixing, they would play with the eyes, putting dots of blue and dots of yellow next to each other so the eyes would see green. The group also brushed away the idea of drawing on the board first, working from the darkest tones to the lightest ones, and creating a sense of ‘volume’ in their subjects. These were simple, but revolutionary changes in the art world.
Contemporary artists, those approved by the Salon, looked down upon the Impressionistic movement, along with the public. But this contempt did not stop them. With the opening of the Salon des Refusés more and more people came to see their work. Although many of the people who came scorned them, they met other fellow artists and would work with them for the next Salon.
But other than all that, nothings happened. Although, I'm about to no longer have a little sister. She came into my room and took my blankets while I was sleeping. I woke up around 3 and was FREEZING! GRR...
signing off,
