The 19th century art began anti-rationally with Romanticism and ended anti-rationally with Symbolism. But why? This course focuses on artistic movements of the period: in particular how artists associated with Impressionism, Divisionism, Symbolism and Postimpressionism anticipated Modernism by challenging traditional laws of drawing and the use of colour. Artists discussed include Manet, Degas, Whistler, Seurat, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne.
During this period Paris becomes the art capital of Europe out of which Realism, Impressionism and Symbolism emerge as major art movements that provide the foundations for Early Modernism. Artists involved in these movements challenge all traditional aesthetics associated with art of the past and with Academic Realism; and ultimately have a profound influence on art production elsewhere in Europe.
Realism is the first movement to represent a more overt political stance by some artists with the publication of Courbet’s realist manifesto and the emergence of the worker and the urban as subjects exemplifying the ‘real’ in art. With the advent of photography posing a threat to representational art, an avant-garde group of Parisian artists anticipate modernism by challenging laws of drawing and colour. Influenced by Japonisme, a style that permeates western culture at this time, artists also reconsider compositional conventions. Also influenced by Baudelaire’s Painting of Modern Life they seek new subject matter in the city and its inhabitants. Impressionism develops from Realism and continues the artistic rebellion as artists use pure colour and revolutionary techniques to capture the transitoriness of nature in the landscape.
In the final decade of the century, Symbolism represents a reaction against the subject matter and techniques of the impressionists. There is a significant move by artists throughout Northern Europe towards subjectivity and introspection in the expressive use of colour, decoration and by seeking further non-European sources.
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