Lecture 8Outline of Last LectureI) Post-ImpressionismA) Thinking about Manet, considered the predecessor to impressionism, their teacher, but a refusal to show his work at their shows1) At the Bar at the Folies Bergeres (1882)B) The actual figures of Post-Impressionism1) Georges Seurata) Bathers, Asnieres (1883- 1884)b) Bec du Hoc at Grandcamp (1885)c) A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Hatte (1884- 1886)Outline of Current LectureI) Post-ImpressionismA) Seurat1) A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande JatteeB) Gauguin1) Where do we come from? Where are we? Where are we going? (1897)2) The Vision After the Sermon; Jacob Wrestling with an Angel (1888)3) The Yellow Christ (1889)4) Self Portrait (Les Miserables), (1888)5) Spirit of the Dead Watching, (1892)6) Exotic Eve (1890)7) The Loss of Virginity (1890-1891)8) The Birth of Christ (1896)9) La Orana Maria10) Mahana No Atua (Day of God)C) Gustave Moreau, The Apparition (1876)D) Odilon Redon, Cyclops (1895-1900)E) Van Gough1) Self-Portrait (To my Friend Paul Gauguin) (1888)a) Compare to Portrait of Zola, Manet, (1867)Current LectureII) Post-ImpressionismA) Seurat1) A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatteea) Anti-utopianb) The first post-impressionist painterc) The ways in which Seurat’s monumentalizing of leisure is not just a critique, anarchist ideas all that is good comes from laziness, the right to laziness!i) The gathering of many classes in the same space= engagement with utopia; a multi-class societyii) Form, method of painting (pointillism, atomization of the points of paint) stays at the level of the brush strokeThe form of the figures of many different classes are all made from the same type of brush strokes, loss of hierarchyA sense of tapestry, these particles build up the worldDescribed the way he painted as “applying a method,” he WORKED in his studioAssociated his labor with working class labor  priced his paintings according to the time they took to create and the typical wages of the French workers of the timeMechanic productioniii) “Artists are men who want to become inhuman”B) Gauguin1) Where do we come from? Where are we? Where are we going? (1897)a) Monumental scaleb) Questioning human identity itself?c) Importance of figuration2) Break with impressionism/emergence as a crucial figurea) Success as a stockbrokerb) Family life in Denmarkc) Leaving his family to return to Paris and paint exclusivelyd) Real moment of breaki) Disassociation with is former lifeii) Break with the impressionist circles he had been associated with; Pissarroiii) Converted to “neo-impressionism” after meeting Seurativ) Moves away from ParisFirst to the North of France  retreat from the urban landscape “untouched by modernization”3) The Vision After the Sermon; Jacob Wrestling with an Angel (1888)a) Not involved with the transcription of color as optical effects at alli) A bright red grass? An expanseii) Monumental forms in the foreground of the painting, we stare into the painting with themiii) The concept of vision has been changedLooking towards the spiritual worldSome figures are closing their eyes in prayerDreamlikeb) Confused scaling of objects and figuresc) Regressioni) Return of line and drawingFilling in of zones, flat planes of colorii) Return to biblical themes and contentiii) Association with stained glass4) The Yellow Christ (1889)a) Medieval sense of formi) Almost anti-humanistii) Beyond the worldly and towards the spiritualb) Transformation wants to work on the level of a break with impressionism tying color to a relationship with the worldi) Color becomes excessive, almost arbitrary  freed, intuitiveii) Glowing with a light and color that is not of the real; no longer copying light and momentsiii) NOT involved with mimesisiv) Use of the term “abstraction”One derives from nature while dreaming before it5) Self Portrait (Les Miserables), (1888)a) Sent to Van Goughb) Featuring Victor Hugo in the corneri) Personifying himself as a criminal, outsiderii) Representation within representationiii) Cartoon treatmentc) Arbitrary, non-natural colori) Effects of excess through simultaneous contrastii) Corpse-like and burning with an internal fire at oneA play of free color across mimetic featuresFreeing painting from realism and naturalismd) Association with femininityi) Flower wall-papere) Van Gough will respond with a self portrait as well6) Spirit of the Dead Watching, (1892)a) Finally a complete removal from France all-together- move to Tahitii) A place idealized for its “otherness” despite the imperialism that had taken place thereii) Primitivism: search for renewing of artistic languages in other culturesBelief that one can flee far in space from European culture and travel back in time to a culture that has not fallen to the decadence of modern life and industryb) Figuration, focus on the monumental bodyi) Corporealii) Attraction to the skin of the Tahitian, non-white skin as a dissociation with the Westernc) Intensification of arbitrary colori) Turn away from the bright primary colors that he favored beforeii) Increasing “artificialness” of color that embraces non-mimetic colord) Flattening of the imagesi) In the context we are familiar with, as well as literally pressing the paint into the surfacee) Increasing of canvas size  monumentalizing the figure, occupying the entire expanse of the paintingf) Relationship to Olympiai) Challenge of the nudeg) The break from impressionism comes simultaneously with the focus on the bodyi) Thinking back to Courbet; the erotic and the sexualii) The Origin of the World (1866)Taking the body as far as possibleEngaging with a frankness of the form of the female nudeKept by Lecan in secret until very recentlyiii) Thinking about Degasiv) After the Bath & The TubRethinking the body, away from the classical notions of the bodyv) Thinking about Renoirvi) The Large Bathers (1884- 1887)This is a scene of all pleasureIdealization of erotic and pleasure and sensualityGauguin’s reactionsBoy of the Bretagne (1889)Alienating viewSpace of pure painting, no horizon or groundThe body is passive before the painter’s and the viewer’s gazeTwo Tahitian Women (1899)Monumentalize the figureFeatured in some other space or other world that we can’t place  this is for Gauguin a type of redemption for Western notionsThe body is presented passively7) Exotic Eve (1890)a) Borrows forms from other artistic traditions8) The Loss of Virginity