Paris 2

Neo-Impressionism

The Last Impressionism Exhibit was dominated by a group of artists who had gone beyond the empirical painting style of the Impressionists to create an art that was based on scientific principles. The Impressionist brushtroke, which had been an intuitive response to visual stimulus, became highly formalized. Paul Saurat (1859-1891) was the central figure of the Neo-Impressionists. He studied scientific treatises on optics, and works on aesthetics, and devised a rational approach to the Impressionist painting style. He placed small strokes of unmixed color side by side. He would place a light green beside a yellow. The viewer’s eye at the proper distance would mix the colors together producing the desired yellow-green. This principle of the viewer’s eye mixing the colors is called optical mixing. The critic Felix Feneon was the first to label the work of Seurat and the others Neo-Impressionism, recognizing the difference from early Impressionist works. He called Seurat’s method of painting pointilism, referring to the small dashes or dots of juxtaposed color. Seurat preferred the term divisionism to describe his method. Either term may be properly used to describe this careful technique. It is characterized by careful application of small strokes of color that, when mixed by the viewer’s eye at the proper distance create an effect of brilliant luminosity and sparkling color. Other artists following in this vein were Signac and Pissarro. Seurat, however, was the outstanding artist of this short-lived style. Post-Impressionism was a term coined by the art critic Roger Fry. Fry was the organizer of the exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists, held in central London in 1910. The central figures on the exhibition were Van Gogh, Cezanne and Gauguin. The Post-Impressionists were artists whose paintings were not unified by a single goal or visual appearance. The term, instead refers to the various styles of art that developed as an outgrowth of, or reaction to Impressionism. For Cezanne, structure was the central concern of his work. He wished to "make of Impressionism something solid and durable like the art of museums." His exploration and analysis of form eventually inspired the Cubists. Gauguin rejected the civilized world and renounced the "abominable error of naturalism". His paintings used flat, saturated areas of color and undulating linear rhythms of pattern to describe a spiritual state. He reinvested art with symbolism, and the various movements of primitivism and symbolism followed his example. Vincent van Gogh, whose painting Dr. Gachet is illustrated above, traveled a solitary path to new means of visual expression. His emphasis on the psychic state of his portrait subjects, and his investment of landscape and even still-life with violent, turbulent energy influenced the later movements of Expressionism. ~Benita~

Paul Cezanne 1839-1906 Born in Aix-en-Provence In 1839 to a hat-maker turned wealthy banker, Paul Cezanne developed into one of the outstanding figures of Post-Impressionism. In 1861 Paul began his studies at the Academie Suisse in Paris, after prompting by his friend, the writer Emile Zola. In Paris he met Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Bazille and Sisley. Zola also introduced Cezanne to Manet and Courbet. Cezanne studied the paintings of Delacroix. Delacroix’s loose brushwork and themes of violence must have inspired Cezanne’s own early work. Perhaps this fit with Cezanne’s own nature which contemporaries described as being impetuous and given to sudden outbursts of temper. Cezanne’s financial security (he received a stipend from his father) allowed him the opportunity to devote himself to his art. Cezanne was afraid of his domineering father, and kept his mistress and even the birth of their son a secret from his father for many years. Cezanne finally married his misress Hortense Figuet in 1886, not long before his father died. By 1870 Cezanne had begun to work out-of-doors. He abandoned the earlier impetuous style of his youth and focussed on a more disciplined approach to composition. In 1972 he settled in Auver-sur-Oise near the home of Pissarro. Although Cezanne exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874 and 187, his goals in painting put him at a distance from the Impressionist circle. The Impressionists sought to capture fleeting impressions of light and color, but Cezanne began to explore structure, harmony and stability in his paintings. He declared that he should, "make of Impressionism something solid like the art of museums." His search for clarity, order and structure did not lead him into the territory of the old masters, however. Instead, he tried to build a painting with interlocking forms of color. After the death of his father in 1886 Cezanne inherited the family estate and moved to Aix-en-Provence. There, he concentrated on his goals in painting. He wished to show space, light and depth without resorting the the artificial constructs of linear perspective and without sacrificing the color that he had learned to use form the Impressionist. In order to solve these visual problems, he developed a new way of painting. Cezanne once remarked that nature was reducible to the "cone the cylinder and the sphere". He sought the underlying structure of organic form, and began to break the outlines into directional brushstrokes laden with carefully modulated color to describe objects in space. His style was laborious, experimental, and slow. It was said that Cezanne once spent 100 sessions in painting a portrait before ultimately abandoning it in dissatisfaction. This almost scientific analysis of visual stimulus and its translation in to paint on canvas (and watercolors and drawings) appeals as much to the mind as the senses. It is for this exploration of form that Cezanne is often referred to as the well from which Cubism drew inspiration. In 1895 Vollard gave Cezanne a one-man show which stimulated the interest of a younger generation of artsits. By 1900, Cezanne was considered an Old Master. His reputation continued to grow. In 1914 Clive Bell wrote that Cezanne was, "The Christopher Columbus of a new continent of form." ~Benita Goldman~

Paul Gauguin 1848-1903

A Taste for the Exotic Might be expected from an artist born of a father from Orleans, France, and a Peruvian Creole mother. Born in 1848 in Paris, Gauguin was then raised in Lima, Peru and joined the merchant marines in 1865. By 1872 he had settled into a successful career as a stockbroker. In his spare time, he painted. Always interested in art, he attended the first Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, met the Impressionist painter Pissarro, and began collecting Impressionist work. He responded to their work at a very early date, while the general critical view was hostile. Gauguin himself exhibited in the official Salon of 1876. Despite official approval, his heart and mind were more closely aligned with the Impressionists. He exhibited with them from their fifth through their eight and last exhibition. He abandoned his wife and children in 1886 after the last Impressionist exhibition, and moved to Pont Avon in Brittany where he became the center of a circle of progressive artists. It was at this point in his career that he began using a very personal and symbolic language of color and flattened form. He traveled to Panama and Martinique in 1887, and in 1888 he visited Arles in the south of France, where he stayed with van Gogh. A violent quarrel broke the friendship between these two artists, and it was at this time that van Gogh experienced his first fit of madness. Gauguin left Arles and van Gogh. In 1891, Gaugin’s love of the exotic led him to leave Paris for Tahiti. In Tahiti Gauguin discovered a world of color and exoticism. He was inspired by the art of life of these "primitive" people, and reacted against the naturalism of the Impressionist. His use of color became stronger with a palette of warm antiphonal harmonies which he used for expressive as well as decorative purposes. In rejecting naturalism, he accentuated color dissonances and undulating visual patterns. As Gauguin once wrote a younger colleague, "How do you see that tree….? Is it quite green? Then, put on green, the finest green on your palette–and that shadow…is it a bit blue? Don’t be afraid to paint it as blue as possible." Gauguin wrote a book about his life in Tahiti entitled Noa Noa. He wrote, "I have escaped everything that is artificial and conventional. Here I enter into Truth, become one with nature." The paintings, prints and carvings from this period of Gauguin’s career emphasize flattened forms and outlines reminiscent of Japanese prints. He used rough canvasses and even burlap to give a direct physical presence to his painting. In his wood-carvings, textural passages are created by his use of the chisel. The forms themselves are heavy, solid and non-Western in their feeling. In his woodblock prints, he also emphasizes the cuting of the block and the impact of solid areas of ink against the page. Gauguin’s rejection of what he called…"The disease of civilized life" led him to create his greatest works of art. In 1893, sickness and poverty forced Gauguin to return to Paris. He returned to Tahiti in 1985 after inheriting money from an uncle. In 1897 he learned of the death of his favorite daughter. Despite his abandonment of his family, the news devasted Gauguin. He painted his most famous work, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? and attempted suicide shortly after its completion. He removed to Domenica in the Marquesas Islands and died there two years later. Gauguin’s powerful body of work influenced the Nabis, Symbolists, Fauves and the Expressionists. Gauguin, van Gogh and Cezanne transformed the art of the Impressionists. Gauguin sought a relationship with the visual world that emphasized rather than excluded the interior life of the spirit. He exaggerated color for the sake of expression and feeling, and returned to the use of symbolism. In his embrace of the exotic, he developed a language of flat forms, shape, value and color relationships that had not been seen before. This development is key to understanding his contribution. In leaving what the hisotrian Arnold Toynbee described as the "Tyranny of Representation" (that dependency on visual mimesis which returned to the western artist’s mind repeatedly once initiated in the age of Classical Greece) artist such as Gauguin break with the traditions of western art and open the door to the proliferation of styles of the 20th century. The Nabis were a group of Parisian painters (the word Nabis was taken from the Hebrew word for prophet) who found in Gauguin’s style an almost religious illumination. They formed in the 1890’s with such artists as Bonnard, Denis, Vuillard and Serusier (the latter having met Gauguin in 1888, and thus inspired to form the group). Maurice denis wrote an article in 1890 formalizing Gauguin’s ideas. He wrote, "A picture–before being a warhorse, a nude woman or some sort of anecdote–is essentially a surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order." This instance on the primary place of color and the physical sensuality of art is a thread to be picked up later in the 20th century. You can imagine how pure abstraction could develop from an idea such as this. Part of Gauguin’s legacy to the 20th century is this emphasis on the abstract organization of the picture plane. The Symbolists also found inspiration in Gauguin’s work. Although loosely associated with Gauguin, they shared a rejection of naturalism and realism in art,. And found inspiration in French Symolist writing. They desired to explore mystical sand spiritual truths rather than the exterior appearances of the world. Gauguin, Odilion Redon, Puvis de Cavannes, Gustave Moreau and Edvard Munch are connected by intent to Symbolist ideas, although there are few visual similarities to their individual styles. ~Benita Goldman~

The Baroque style of architecture finds an imposing voice in the palace of Versailles. Originally a royal hunting lodge, Versailles became the greatest and most influential palace in Europe, with an entire city radiating from its central courtyard. Louis XIV's plans were practical and astonishingly luxurious at the same time. The practicality came in removing the court from entrenched factions in the Louvre in Paris. Under the watchful eye of the meticulous Monarch, the court came and literally sat at his feet….(it was considered an honour for a nobleman to dress the King….to put on his shoes was seen as a wonderful privilege.) Bedrooms closest to the King's were seen as the best…and a nobleman could count himself lucky to be in the rarified atmosphere of the heart of the court of Versailles. The luxurious nature of the enterprise is self-evident….Louis bankrupted the coffers of the state in building Versailles (as well as in failed Rhineland initiatives). Why does Versailles seem so unlike Italian Baroque architecture of the same time? It has a symmetry and restraint that Italian Baroque architecture does not. It does, in fact, resemble Italian Renaissance architecture more closely than the Italian Baroque style. An all-encompassing geometric relationship of parts to the whole were, in fact, due to the French adoption of the Italian Renaissance architectural style of Andrea Palladio, whose books reached France and had a powerful impact. ~Benita~

Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) Neoclassicism

He studied first with Boucher, a distant relative, and one of the most important Rococo artists of the mid-eighteenth century. The Rococo style was preferred by the court of Louis XV, and Boucher had become the favorite of the King’s mistress, Madame Pompadour. However, Boucher realized that his light airy and frivolous style was unsuited to the temperament of his young pupil, and sent David to study under the artist Vien. In 1776, David won the Prix de Rome, enabling him to study with his new mentor, Vien, who had been appointed director of the French Academy in Rome. David left Paris, vowing not to be corrupted by Italy. However, he drew deep from the wells of inspiration in Roman ruins and sculptures, and returned to Paris with a style firmly opposed to Rococo art. Where Rococo line was feathery and light, his was firm and severe. Where the subjects of Rococo art were the aristocracy at play, his subjects were dramas of high seriousness, drawn from Roman and Greek history. A similar reaction against the frivolity of the Rococo style was occurring in the United States. The new republic looked to the classic examples of ancient Rome first for inspiration. Thomas Jefferson chose a Roman structure as a model for the very first State Capitol, the building he designed for Richmond, Virginia in 1786. Jefferson had an enthusiasm for "whatever is Roman, and noble." The simple, clear, geometric relationships and unadorned surfaces of Roman architecture seemed to express the ethical values of the new republic.

On the other side of the Atlantic, France was about to engage in a revolution. David’s painting, inspired by his time in Rome, seemed to speak for a nation. In his famous work, The Oath of the Horatti, 1784, David subordinated brushwork to near invisibility. The surface of his painting was undisturbed by impasto, and color was used to balance the strict, formal composition. Drawing and firm contour described the figures that enacted their roles in shallow space like a Roman sculptural bas-relief frieze. The subject of this painting was drawn from one of the legends of the founding of the Roman Republic. The three sons swear oaths to defend their country against the plotting Curatii. Horatious Proculus dedicates the swords, and the lives of his sons, to this noble cause as he raises his eyes up to the heavens. Exhibited in the official Salon, the public viewed this painting as a direct call to the citizenry, and a condemnation of the kind and his ministers who refused to respond to the needs of the country.

Another painting by David, The Lictors Bringing Back to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, 1789, tells the story of a time shortly after the founding of the Roman republic Lucius Brutus had discovered that his sons had been involved in a plot to restore the overthrown monarchy. He ordered their execution. In this scene, Brutus sits engulfed in shadow as the Roman lictors, or officers, return with the dead bodies of his sons. Self-sacrifice, honor, stoic resolution and civic virtue were the moral lessons embodied in his work. Louis XVI was on the throne when this was exhibited in the Salon, but not for much longer! On July 14, 1789, the Bastille fell, and David joined forces with the Revolution, becoming a Deputy and voting for the execution of Louis XVI.

David's painting of the assassination of one of the revolution's leaders, The Death of Marat, 1793, raised portraiture to the arena of high tragedy. David was imprisoned for a brief time after the death of Robespierre. He was released on the strength of pleas from his divorced wife. (She had divorced him, because her sympathies were royalist.) David and his wife remarried, and it was said that he painted his next great work to honor her. The Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1794-1799, expresses the concept of love prevailing over conflict. Politically, it was interpreted as a pleas for the end of civil strife that had affected all of France so deeply. This painting brought David to the attention of Napoleon, and reestablished David's preeminence as the greatest painter of the period. Under Napolean, David's career flourished, and he created a number of homages to his great patron, including The Coronation of Napoleon 1805-1807, and Napoleon Crossing the Alps 1800. These paintings reflected a change from his earlier republican style of work. Although David always stood firm as an opponent to Romantic painting he seems to have indulged in a love of pageantry and emotion in these works. We must look aside from David's considerable involvement in politics, for a moment, to focus on another area of his work.

David was one of the supreme portrait painters of the period. In the illustration, we see the painting, Madame Recamier 1880. The fascination with antiquity was fed, in part, by excavations of the lost cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Never before had the ancient world been exposed in such detail. The layers of ash that had for so long hidden Pompeii, also preserved it. In 1748, a farmer plowing his field made the first discoveries. By the late eighteenth century, the fashionable women in Paris had adopted the home furnishings, hairstyles and dress of ancient Pompeii. One such woman was Madame Recamier, shown reclining on a Empire chaise lounge, surrounded by furniture copied from the antique. Her intelligence gaze shows us that David was a keen observer of personality, as well as a brilliant painter of objective fact. With the fall of Napoleon in 1815, David went into exile in Brussels. He spend the last decade of his life removed from the brilliant spotlight he had worked in for most of his life. The impact of David's work was enormous. It had a tremendous influence on French, and indeed, all of European painting. We should note, here, that the style of Neoclassicism had its origins in Rome. One of the main forces behind the interest in classical antiquity was the work of the German art historian and archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768). Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art published in 1764 was the first book ever to combine the words "art" and "history". It served as a basis for the development of art history as a basis for the development of art history as an intellectual discipline. Winckelmann's descriptions of Greek art as an index of the spirit of the time in which it was created, stirred a passionate interest in the public for all things classical. Another force in the success of Neoclassicism was its ability to translate the glories of the past into symbols of the present. When the Arc du Carrousel was erected in the Tillers in Paris, it recalled the heroic arch of Septum Fevers in Rome, but did so for Napoleon's glory. The Column Vendome was built on the model of Trajan's Column, but, again it celebrated Napoleonic victories, while echoing those of ancient Rome. It is not an accident that Washington, DC. Owes many of its most prominent buildings to the Neoclassic style. The framers of our constitution admired the civic virtues of the Roman republic, and , as Winckelmann did, saw those as virtues reflected in classical architecture. Finally, in painting the success of Neoclassicism in partly due to what it opposed. It was seen as a kind of antidote to the sugary sweetness of the pastel, fluffy world of Rococo decadence.

The bracing, somber, solid, and severe compositions of David were as much of a relief as a square meal after a diet of pastries. Let them eat cake, indeed! More importantly, David's paintings reflected the changing values of the people disgusted with the excesses remoteness of the monarchy. David had a number of famous pupils, including Gros and Gerard, but his most famous pupil was Ingres, who retained David's firm line, but moved toward Romanticism. ~Benita Goldman

The Academy and the Salon

The first Academia del Disegno was formed by Duke Cosimo de Medici in Florence in 1563. The biographer, friend and admirer of Michelangelo, Giorgio Vasari urged the Duke to form the academy, in part to free artists from the guild system, and, in part to reflect the elevation of the artist's status from craftsman to creator on a part with others in the Liberal Arts. Certainly, Michelangelo had been instrumental in this elevation of status, and he served briefly, as one of the heads of the Academia, with Duke Cosimo serving as the other.

In 1648 Louis XIV founded the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Under the Directorship of the architect Lebrun, and Louis XIV's chief minister, Colbert, the Academie became the official arbiter of taste and style. In 1667, the Salon was created to exhibit the works of members of the Academie. This exhibition was held in the Salon d'Apollen in the Louvre, and created a kind of monopoly on the creation and exhibition of officially sponsored art in France. By the end of the 18th century, Academics flourished throughout Europe, and most adhered to a strict Neoclassic style. The term "Academic" came to refer to an art taught through logical, methodical steps, with careful draughtmanship, based on accepted and approved models. The finished product of the Academic was usually highly refinded and polished. Towards the end of the 18th century, resentment formed towards the monopoly the Academy held in France's art world. Artists with sympathies for the French Revolution demanded the dissolution of the Academy. One of the loudest demands came from the artist David.

The Academy was disbanded in 1793, and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was founded in 1795. The Salon was the official juried exhibition sponsored by the Ecole from 1748 on. Inclusion or exclusion in the immensely important exhibition could make or break an artist's career. For two hundred years the Salon remained the most powerful instrument of publicity for an artist. The Ecole had effectively become as much a monopoly as the Academie. In the 19th century, artists began to look outside the official Salon for venues in which to show thier work.

Courbet set up his own pavilion in 1855, in reaction to rejection of two of his works by committee that year. In 1863, artists rejected by the committee protested strongly. The emperor Napoleon III ordered a special exhibition of their work, called the Salon des Refuses. Although much of the work in the exhibition was publicly ridiculed, the Salon des Refuses underminded the exclusivity and prestige of the official Salon. Artists exhibiting their work in the Salon des Refuses included: Manet, Pissarro and Fantin-LaTour. After this ground-breaking show, artists organized alternate exhibitions, and dealers became important in publicizing artists. The academies lost their influence throughout Europe. By 1898, the English critic George Moore wrote, "that nearly all artists dislike and despise the Royal Academy is a matter of common knowledge." The term "academic" came to be perjorative term, referring to work that was laboriously mediocre, polished, banal, and devoid of meaning.

The Rococo Style - 1715-1775

The 18th century saw new social theories and new styles of art emerge. The Enlightenment sculptor Houdon depicted one of the great minds of the period…Voltaire. I am always reminded, when I see this portrait bust, of Voltaire's statement, "I have never made the ha-ha." The intelligent face is not laughing, but this sculpture of the writer of Candide is smiling. His smile has been called "the smile of reason". Reason was indeed the hallmark of the writers of the Enlightenment.

When Louis XIV died in 1715, his successor moved the court back to Paris. A salon society of aristocrats and the wealthy flourished. Artists of the period found a new audience, and became less dependent on the king than the earlier generation had been. In architecture, the Rococo Style was truly international. It was as if the architects of the period had looked at the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, and decided that it was pretty cool, but didn’t go far enough. They favored more gilding, lighter and more decorative framing, more ornate but delicate effects. We can see the Rococo Period as a late development of the Aristocratic Baroque Style. Palaces were springing up all over the place . . .and, not inconsequentially, the taste for all things French spread throughout the courts of Europe. French was spoken as easily as one’s native language in Prussia, Poland, Russia and Vienna. The French style of dress, manners, hairstyles, furniture and architecture were copied throughout Europe. In Prussia, the new palace at Potsdam was created in a particularly delightful Rococo Style, and Frederick the Great called his new digs by a French name "Sans-Souci"…or, "carefree". In Vienna, Hildebrandt designed the Belvedere Palace with its ornate façade. Some of these palaces were like jewel boxes in the intimacy and delicacy of their highly ornate decoration and plan. The Zwinger in Dresden (which was destroyed in World War II, but is now rebuilt) was one of the most delightful of these Rococo palaces. Gone from the architect’s vocabulary were the reserve and formality of the earlier style. It was replaced by a new lightness…even a sense of frivolity.

The term "Rococo" may derive, in part, from the use of "rocaille" or rock decorative motifs, or the shell motifs called "coquilles" that were used in every imaginable way…as designs to decorate window frames, mirrors, ceiling enhancement, and as decorative elements in furniture. Combine that with "barocco", the Italian word for "Baroque" and we have the name for this new development. The Church availed itself of these new designs. The mystical, operatic fusion of the arts seen in the Italian Baroque period became the Rococo swirls of clouds, pastel light, and decorative extravagance of such pilgrimage churches as the Weiskirbe in Barvaria. Throughout northern Europe, particularly, Rococo was the style of church building.

Jean Honore Fragonard (1732-1806) was a pupil of Chardin, then Boucher. In 1752 he won the Prix de Rome. He studied in Italy from 1756 to 1761, being most strongly influenced by Tiepolo, whose looseness and freedom of brushwork, and coloring he admired. He drew the gardens at Tivoli, and these motifs cropped up in his later work, throughout his career. Fragonard is known for his erotic images, his scenes of gallantry and frivolity, and is considered the epitome of the Rococo artist. He was supported mostly by private patrons, the most famous of these being yet another mistress of Louis XV, the beautiful Madame du Barry. His scenes, then, were intended for a private audience, and he had a successful career until the rise of the Neoclassic movement. The changing of tastes left him unable to adapt to the new style, and as his work fell out of favor he was ruined financially, and died in poverty. The legacy of Fragonard skips the Neoclassicists and funds an audience in the Impressionists. Renoir particularly loved Fragonard's lighthearted style. In his best work, Fragonard's images have a joyful abandon and charming quality, as if one had thrown bunches of rose petals to the wind. ~Benita Goldman

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