I) There is no simple origin point for Modern ArtA) Possible starting points1) Jacques Louis Davida) The Oath of the Horatii, 1784i) If we started hereModernism as a moralismTurn to sculpture to make his paintings; the different languagesDrawing is very importantDavid breaks with the art of the aristocracy for political reasonsBefore this moment art was inside the church and the state above all else  where does art live now? After this moment.2) Theodore Gericaulta) The Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819i) Turn against the order, structure, rationality of neoclassicism; irrationality, madness, extreme states of beingii) An event from public lifePainting from a story from the newspapersiii) Two pyramidal forms, something geometric? Bodies reaching away from the vanishing pointThe vanishing point, the infinite is not centered, the picture has become fragmentedI) Where do we start (continued)A) French RevolutionB) Rise of Romanticism1) French painter Gericaulta) Raft of the Medusai) Turns away from the neoclassical heritageii) Still important: use of the male nude bodyiii) Deformation of the formal language of geometryNo longer centeredThe painting seems to turn around in space away from the vieweriv) Condition of the fragment2) Writer Charles BaudelaireII) Fragmentation dissolution, incompletionA) Organic as opposed to inorganic (fragmented)B) Example: The Last Supper  NOT fragment1) All lines are receding into one centered infinite point (which happens to lie just beyond the head/eye of Christ)a) These lines are pointing back, even the points of the edges of the canvasb) Paintings meant to be viewed from the apex of the inverse pyramid created by the recession within the painting2) Paintings were so based on text (the bible) that they were created to be read form left to righta) Gesture as a visual encoding something like written text and language3) Man created in the image of Goda) Influences the tradition of painting the human form until the moment of modernismC) Example: The School of Athens, Raphael (1510)1) About the classical heritage of the Greeks in the moment of the renaissance2) Two figures positioned in the center of the canvas, a splita) Plato pointing to the heavens and Aristotle gesturing downwards to the realD) Place de la Concorde, Degas (1875)1) The center-point is left blank2) The horizon line raises up to the top of the canvas3) The human figures stand uncaring of that center4) The gazes are haphazard and unaligned with anything elseE) Loss of the center, arbitrary end place of the objects and of the edges of the canvas1) The composition isn’t encased completely and wholly2) Cubism is the apex of painterly fragmentationF) Social aspects of fragmentation1) Third possible moment of the beginning of modernism—1840sa) The Stonebreakers, Gustave Courbet (1849)i) Themetize fragmentationii) Monuentize the bodyCenters two bodies in the foregroundiii) Political climateFirst major working class revolution; overthrow of capitalism the bourgeoisie is NOT the class of progressiv) Brings the language of history painting down and paints the working class directly  REALISMv) What is realism in painting? In French painting of this time?Art should be of one’s moment and of one’s society; NOT the Greeks and NOT the bibleIf modernism starts with realism, it wants nothing to do with the noble and with historyBodies turn away from usThey are not individualizedThe world and the flesh are realThe backside was a favoriteModernism is a materialism, it wants to immerse itself in the flesh and be completely in the worldb) Burial at Ornans, Courbet (1850)i) A key moment in the lives of the peasantsii) Pictorially, the painting seems to stretch for milesFigures are larger than life sizeStretches from left to right, the bodies to not recede into space, but exist in left to right and compress into a collectiveRealism is democracy in paintingDisorder of spaceSpreading of faces and bodies from end to end in the canvasLeaving of all hierarchyIs the center the hole in the middle bottom?Is it Courbet’s family at the center of the image?There is no clear infinite pointStress on matter rather than the ideal or the divineiii) ScandalThe high language of history painting and of the ruling classes was turned over to the working and the middle classesc) The Painter’s Studio, Courbet (1855)i) 1854 Paris Salon was cancelled for the Universal ExhibitionCourbet’s submitted paintings were rejected  he erected the “Pavilion of Realism” in defiance (Avant Garde Gestures which stand against the dominant class of the time)ii) What is in the background? We cannot tell exactlyiii) Egalitarian spread of figures and bodiesNude, naked? bodyiv) Courbet is at the center of the space painting a landscape followed by supporters, admirers, and patronsv) Figures of power are disguised as the poor scattered around the spacevi) A painting of painting itself  work of art about the work of artIf modernism started here, it would be a materialism, political in the democratic sense, the moment when art became self-reflexive and self-consciousIII) The true origin point!A) 1860s—Manet1) Music in the Tulieries (1862) a small painting fit for an easela) Painting of one’s times, of modern life—social life taking place in a park in Parisi) Spectators of a musical eventii) Baudelaire is in SO MANY paintings around this timeIn this painting, he is turning away and his features are lost to us, he is presented as a lossb) Manet exists at the edge of the painting cut off by the edge of the canvas—FRAGMENTc) Trees weaving through the canvas ending with figuresi) Man and nature presented togetherd) Forms are open to change and flux because of the sketchy application of the paint itself2) Baudelaire drawing circulated around this same time, the same view as in the Music in the Tulieries paintinga) Art is about the transient, the ephemeral, the fleetingB) The Romans of the Decadence, Thomas Couture (1847)1) Monumental scale2) Classical in terms of style and thematic3) Scenes of allegory of French contemporary life dressed up like the Romans4) Bodies centered around a Roman orgy5) Seeks to be a kind of moralism of French societyC) Manet sought new ways to paint1) A method of “unskill” // rejection of the training of the school2) Vicorine in the Costume of an Espadaa) Neither allegory nor realismb) Neither from the streets or from the classical pastART HIS 54Lecture 2Outline of Last Lecture I) There