1) Monet and the impressionistsI) RecapA) Manet  impressionistsII) ImpressionismA) Painting has undergone a shift: reordering of the genres and their heriarchies1) Important movesIII) MonetA) Women in the Garden (1967)B) Terrace at Sainte-Andresse (1867)C) Compare to The Sazai Hall of the 500 Rakan Temple by the Japanese artist Hokusai (1760-1849)IV) Impressionism ProperA) Bouldevard des Capucines (1872), Monet1) Compare to Childen’s Games, Breugel (1560)2) Compare of Regatta at Argenteuil, Monet (1872)Current LectureV) ImpressionismA) Painting has undergone a shift: reordering of the genres and their heriarchies1) Elevation of landscape, portraiture, and still life (those of looking rather than narrating or following language)a) The impression, sensation, the moment of perception itself is celebratedb) Transcribing the act of looking, move away from telling a storyc) The act of painting will prioritize the act of the public seeing the work, the production of the work is no longer the priorityi) There is no pre-ordained knowledge that is necessaryii) The viewer before the painting is being elevated, the public’s participation in the painting is as important as the skill of the artist2) Important movesa) Move away from Chiraoscuroi) Impressionists began to ban dark pigments from the canvasb) Downplay of drawing in a paintingi) Color becomes very important and the application of paintc) Move away from the studio itself, out into the landscaped) Prioritization of the brush stroke itself (impasto, the broken stroke)i) As opposed to the prioritization of finish and blending/smoothing in academic paintingii) Embracing of the “unfinished”The viewer is allowed to understand how the painting was made (we can see the direction of the stroke, etc.)VI) MonetA) Women in the Garden (1967)1) A transitional work2) Took his large canvas outside so that he could paint in the real (rather than imagined) conditions of light and color3) There is no recognizable eventa) Like Manet’s Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe4) Tree in the center of the composition, intense moment of sunlight on the ground and dress, shadowB) Terrace at Sainte-Andresse (1867)1) Move away from the semi-private villa gardena) Move out into the public spaceb) At a specific time of day in specific conditions of light and weather  this takes place in REAL time rather than EPIC time as in history paintings2) The content is still concerned with bodies in the spacea) Still a transitional paintingb) Two seated figures are looking into the painting at two standing figures who appear framed within the space of the canvasi) A painting about looking at a framed scene3) Moved away from any black under-painting or outlinea) The painting builds up from light itself and brush strokes of pigment4) Monet’s paintings are often described in their “quietness”a) The act of looking5) Compositiona) The horizon line is raised above the mid-pointi) Flattening of spaceb) There is no convincing recession in spacec) Use of the flagi) The flag is like a paintingii) The painting is split into 3 bands (land, ocean, and sky) like a flagC) Compare to The Sazai Hall of the 500 Rakan Temple by the Japanese artist Hokusai (1760-1849)1) Different special ordering2) Elements have depth, but there is a definite flattening (spreading up)3) Artists like Monet are looking outside the Western history for tools and elements for use in their own paintingVII) Impressionism ProperA) Bouldevard des Capucines (1872), Monet1) The figure became very problematic2) Rethinking of the genre of landscape (the modern/urban space of the city)a) Collision of urban and nature, city and landscapeb) One of the spaces out of which the impressionist project develops3) May have been shown in the first impressionist exhibition in 1874a) Held in the studio of one of the photographers of the timeb) This canvas is a scene from the window of the studio that the exhibition was held4) Compositiona) The horizon line is raised even higherb) Looking down on one of the major boulevards of Paris at the timec) The figures resolve themselves into scrapings of paintd) Trees that resolve themselves into a cluttered area of thickened paint take the center stage in this canvas5) Compare to Hunters in the Snow, Pieter Bruegel (1565)a) From the Northb) The canvas exists on a diagonal through the middle of the compositionc) The center point, where the viewer exists, has been taken away from the compositioni) Aerial view6) Monet was returning not just to anti-classical styles but to landscape paintinga) Relationship to the world, earthy formsb) A bird in flight, to highlight that the painting exists in a single moment (unlike academic history paintings)7) Compare to Childen’s Games, Breugel (1560)a) The point of recession is WAY off to the sideb) The entire world is occupied by childrenc) The world turned upside downi) Inversion of the power, the structure of the worldii) Social implications8) Compare of Regatta at Argenteuil, Monet (1872)a) Much must placidb) The intensity of lighti) Light is vision, color is lightc) Inversion of the scenei) Material and fluidity of the painting itselfii) The world is literally turned upside down with the reflections of the objects on the water below themPaint itself is the carrier of the social themes and projects important to this movementd) The language of contradictioni) Doesn’t exist in the language of form, painting illusionistically and not (like Manet) is no longer the goalii) Degas, Place de la Concorde (1875)Never let go of the classical and history painting vocabulary, importance of the bodyMaintaining of moments of outline while sketchily applying the paint to the canvasPainting the modern space of ParisDepicting of the painter Lepic and his two daughtersSlicing the reframing the sceneNo figures are complete or wholeEquivalent to the lack of centered-nessiii) Degas, Young Spartans Exercising (1860)Male vs femaleStructure down the middle, gesturing across the spaceiv) Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877)Collector and participant in the impressionist movementEverything wants to emerge into the experience of the modern viewer of artFigures pushed to the side rather than centered and even fragmented by the edge of the canvasThere is no narrative, just lookingIntense structure of the compositionEverything is balanced with the unstructured figures and the fragmentationThe wet pavement is a metaphor for how the painting wants to ally itself with