I) ManetA) The Old Musician, 18621) Realism: a painting of modern life rather than literature or history2) Details of the painting serving as an encyclopedia of other (past) paintings3) Painterly paintingB) Interesting problems in his earliest work1) Copying the art of the past contracts his interest in realism2) All the genres come togethera) Is he calling criticism to them? Is he painting about the techniques of painting?II) Modernism turns on it’s own language and calls itself into question1) Self-consciousa) Flatness of painting—NOT an illusion2) Related to “art for art’s sake”3) NOT temporal in natureCurrent LectureI) More on Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Pluto and Proserpina (1621)A) He played with optical effects (light and shadow) with his mediumB) Pushing the boundaries of what the marble could or should doC) Playing with light and shadow should only happen in painting!1) Sculpture can only deal with mass and volume and space2) The softness of the marble as it creates the woman’s thigh is something of a violation of the medium itselfD) Think about this in the context of Manet’s Olympia (1865)1) Painting in formal terms that engages in “effacement”a) Relinquishment of painterly illusionment, perspective and 3-dmmensionality in favor of flatness; but then the hand! Definitely rendered in 3 dimensions, in contrast to the flatness of the rest of the female’s body and the rest of the composition  modernism is about contradictions!2) Olympia is about looking, the main figure confronts our gaze and could not be a successful work of art without our participation in looking at itII) Manet and his modernist history paintingA) What a contradiction!B) Some social context1) Francoise Aubert Maximilian’s Shirt (1867)a) Photograph of the bloody shirt of Maximilianb) Mexico has a democratic government by the end of the 1860sc) This attracted Manet’s attention and he began to paint from newspaper accounts of the goings on in MexicoC) The Execution of Maximilian (1867)1) A painting of the firing squad, a series of outlines that seem to be endless—receding into infinitya) between delineated forms and passages of paint loosely brushed onb) “ebauche” this painting would have been considered a sketch in academic painting; a base or foundation for the real painting to be displayedi) this would have been considered impermanent, a rough idea of what the painting would look like Manet choses this level of finish to portray an image of a story that he isn’t quite sure of; a happening in a far-away land that is just story and rumor to the people of Europe2) He decides to paint this same scene AGAIN rather than to “finish” this first onea) It was not shown in Paris until the early 20th century (after Manet’s death)b) The painting was cut up and put back together at a later datec) This new painting was created with much more finish, the clarity is in stark contrast to the first paintingi) The figures are finite and set against a brightly lit, open green landscapeii) The soldiers’ backs are not perfectly turned, we see something of a portrait of earsiii) All black hats with one red hat hidden in the back, that we can barely see (the commanding officer signaling to the squad to fire on Maximilian)iv) The figure on the right is looking down at his riffle and disinterested in the action at handd) Reworking of the Oath of the Horatii as a modern scenee) Goya’s The Third of May (1808)i) A scene of a firing squad aiming at a Jesus-like figureDavidian in it’s organization, but reversedIt has a sense of a temporal momentf) Manet’s The Execution of Maximilian (1868)i) This is the last version he will make of this painitngAddition of a massive gray wall in the backgroundThe guns are bigger in this painting, while the bodies are becoming smallerThe firing squad has become more defined as wellStrange details, a few of the soldiers appear to have their feet lifted off the ground in a tapping method  boredom?These details frustrate the readability of the painting itself; history painting was ALWAYS made to be readable, so what is Manet doing?All riffles in the painting seem to be aiming at the general on the left (NOT Maximilian)His head is thrown back, is this one moment? Or a collage of two moments depicted on the same canvas?Max and the man to his left (our right) don’t even appear to have seen the shot fired yet, very calm—SO MANY moments happening all at once, cause an effect have come undone in this paintingThere is no sword raised to signal the firing of the riffles, there is no causationThe mysterious red line between the two legs of one of the soldiersDelineated figures that stand so close together that they seem to create one super-body that is multiple rather than singleDid this start with David? With his 3 brothers standing almost on top of each otherManet has painted in the shadow of the viewer, told you exactly where to stand and what your view should be—giving us all an active role in the compositionThe shadows of the characters of the painting are also all askew, as if this painting took place at several different moments in several different daylight environmentsii) The last of this history paintings and the first of something elseg) Poussin’s The Isaelites Gathering Manna (1637)i) Biblical sceneii) Paintings cannot speak, but gestures were the vocabulary of this languageiii) Every painting should be an illustration of a foundational text, which came first and had some kind of priority or hierarchyThis painting doesn’t take place in one single moment of the story, from left to center to right, there are three moments that we can observe  this structure falls apart in the modernist artworksIII) Moving on to Claude Monet and the impressionistsA) Impression, Sunrise 18721) Priority on landscape painting (the lowest genre in the old academy)a) Human figures are just small stains of darknessb) Modernism begins with the overturning of the old methods and rules2) Taken on the “ebauche” that Manet began to champion a few years earliera) Loose washes of very liquid paint—incidents of light and color themselvesb) There is no more drawing and no more linesi) Color comes first and line is discarded all togetherii) The colors combine on the canvas rather than mixing on the palate to be placed on the canvas only when perfectiii) There is no disguise, no deeper stage of finish3) This also could not have taken place in a studio (a studio