In class, we wrapped up the Post-Impressionism lecture by looking at the work of Paul Gauguin. In his paintings such as The Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel), Gauguin aimed to represent an inner feeling or experience, using bold colors to convey these feelings. We moved on to Synthesism, which aims to pull inspiration from the mind and attach feelings to images. Edvard Munch’s The Scream is an example of a symbolist work, as it provokes feelings of fear and anxiety. We then moved into the art of the early 20th century, specifically focusing on fauvism and expressionism. In fauvism, artists used bright colors straight from the bottle in a way that demonstrated how color could be applied arbitrarily. We see this in Matisse’s Le Bonheur de Vivre (The Joy of Life), where the color is not true to life but instead aims to capture the enjoyment of life.
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We started today’s lecture with a quick discussion about Paul Gaugin and his works in both Brittany and in Tahiti. When he was working in France most of his works and a Post-Impressionistic flavor, relying on color and simple geometric forms to create simple, dream-like, and totally personal images like his Jacob Wrestling the Angel, which shows a small group of women experiencing a shared vision of Jacob and the Angel as evidenced by the arbitrarily-chosen yet striking red ground. His later works, ones done amidst the lush tropical Polynesian landscapes, draw from various artistic traditions like those of the Tahitians to create painted collages of icons and symbols that describe Gaugin’s personal and artistic philosophies.
Informed by the color and forms of Gaugin and van Gogh, the Fauves set out to take the application of color to its logical end. In his Femme au Chapeau, Henri Matisse employs radiant primary and secondary colors to outline the shape of a well-to-do lady — a classical subject with a unique, abstract application of color. Similarly, in his painting The Joy of Life, Matisse paints a classical bacchanal utterly consumed by color. Ignoring conventions of space and perspective, the painting is an abstract, yet deeply pleasant, symphony of color and line that is meant only to be a sensuous and delightful image.
German Expressionism would build off of this revolutionary application of color and use it to criticize the vacuity of early 20th-century German culture. The two main groups that dominated this period, die Brücke and der Blaue Reiter, were greatly inspired by the works of Nietzche and Freud respectively. Ernst Kirchner’s Street, Dresden uses off-putting greens contrasted with a bubble-gum pink street to imbue the modern German cityscape and its inhabitants, with a revolting and repulsive aire. Reiter painters, like Franz Marc, sought personal solace in nature and depicted natural forms in striking, abstract rays that appear shattered on the canvas.
Class 20
In class 20 we began with Gaugin. Gaugin travels to French polonaise, the Caribbean, and Tahiti in search of pure life, he wanted to paint from the view of a child, not have anything from society or knowledge of other art weigh in on his creations. He was also looking to dream something in its simplest form. He began representing what he felt as the reason for looking for isolation was an opinion about the rapid progression of urban society.
Symbolism is born, converting feeling and emotion. They objectify the subjective instead of subjectifying the objective. Themes with love and death are appealing as they are strong in emotion and simpleton represents what going on. The Scream represents the scream of the world as two-thirds of an island collapsed due to volcanic eruptions that caused tinted sunsets for 6 months and the loudest sound (ever?). This theme conveys emotions but forms a larger event that many experienced. Moods are explored through the uncomfortable combination of colors. And individuals like Rudolf Steiner assign colors to feelings and elemental things. Red usually is something bad, or not desirable, blue is usually something seen as good and pure, and yellow is seen as something happy sensual, or spiritual.
During class, we discussed the coming about of post-impressionism. Color in paintings begins to drive the form of things and the emotion being portrayed in these paintings. Permanence becomes a theme in Post Impressionism. This is seen in Cézanne’s work of a mountain from where he is form. His angle changes but the mountain remains through different works. The color pallet is also simple and stable and rhythm in shape is created by color to make the landscape also stabilize the composition. Composition also plays a large role in Cézanne’s work with branches of trees and later on, dark outlines drawing emphasis to forms. Cézanne is trying to work like Poussin but from the perspective of nature. His work moves towards abstraction later on as he reduces shapes to cones cubes and spheres. Van Gough copies Plum Estate, showing attraction to the downward angle and flattening of space. Using frontal colors like red as backgrounds and passive colors like green as foregrounds, Gough flattens space. He also conveys emotion with the acidic combination of red and green in the night cafe. In The Starry Night, the cypress tree is larger than the church, and through reading his letters to his brother we know Van Gough valued nature over religion as a way to think about death.
Today in class we finished discussing Gauguin and Munch, two post-impressionist painters. Gauguin’s approach to art hinges on the corruptness of society, and the purity of what he considered less civilized or industrialized cultures. To this end, he intentionally abandoned his professional artistic training in favor of circling the globe via French colonies. Color still takes center stage in these paintings, but the subject matter speaks to a very personal expression of Gauguin’s own experiences in the places he visited. The painting, ‘Where do we come from?…’ captures both the realistic figures and environment he would have seen on his travels, but also how he felt about civilization and the burden of knowledge. It’s a painting filled with abstraction and the exotic. Abstraction, reduction, and simplification become key values as art moves into Fauvism and Expressionism in the early 20th Century.
Fauvism is directly influenced by the impressionists due to a retrospective gallery of van Gogh and Gauguin that took place in France. With Impressionism fresh on the minds of French artists, color remained central to the Fauvist style. Andre Derain’s painting of mountains is filled with arbitrary color choices and many patches of blank canvas. Rather than color or art as a personal expression, painting focused on color for the enjoyment of color. Henri Matisse wanted his paintings to feel like a good old armchair, comfortable and pleasant–he accomplished this though color.
In Germany, German Expressionism had two influential movements of painters. The Bridge was intended as an intentional opposition to the existing powers of art, and much like Fauvism, it used arbitrary colors. Kirchner’s painting Street, Dresden, is made to be unnerving, nauseating, and uncomfortable. In both color and form, the painting is a psychological exploration into what bothers us visually. Der Blaue Reiter, the other main movement, was short lived but memorable. Franz Marc shared (and exceeded) Gauguin’s disdain for civilization, and he extended this hatred to humanity in general. In his later works, there are no human figures, only animal, for he believed that the purity of animals contains a life force that corrupted humanity lacks.
Our study of Post-Impressionism was continued in class today. Fauvism came from wild beast in French, as an artistic exhibit with a classical sculpture in the middle was described as being surrounded by wild beasts with paintings of the Post-Impressionist style on the walls. Henri Matisse is a well known artists from this period who was interested in nonwestern art, specially African, South American, and Japanese styles. His painting Mountains at Collioure depicted a real scene but was free with color choices. The abstract forms and colors evolve the sense of reality communicated. The abstraction doesn’t give off an anxiety, just an enjoyment of color.
German Expressionism was a development of Post-Impressionist style in Germany. Two groups, Die Brücke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter, were the avant-garde revolutionaries pushing the forms of artistic expression. Ernst Kirchner painted Street, Dresden in 1908 depicting a real-life scene of people walking along. But the alien colors (greens, yellows, and red) create an uncomfortable scene. The disturbing representation makes an everyday image into an alien, otherworldly experience. His woodcut Tribulations of Love evokes similar uncomfortable emotions, stirring up chaos and pain in the mix of faces, symbols, and shadows. Kandinsky, in the Der Blaue Reiter group, was strongly influenced by the reverse glass painting style. His figures therefore has strong outlines and evolved with his style to become more and more abstract, making it difficult to discern what the forms represent. Self-labeled as “nonobjective expressionism,” Kandinsky’s work was mainly about expressing a feeling rather than a specific scene.
Lots of -isms today! We opened with three Gauguin pieces… a continuation of last class’ lecture. Personally, I really liked The Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel). Gauguin’s works consist of color applied flatly and strongly. I found interesting Prof’s anecdote about the contents inside the parentheses of the title is the content of the sermon witnessed in the painting, something that is not objectively there, and only seen by the women subjects in the foreground. The blood red background conveys the inner mind, symbolizing that this is not an actual event in the flesh, but a vision. It is arbitrary, and is chosen to convey the intensity of the experience. Many of Gauguin’s works stem from his personal opinions and emotions towards society and civilization.
I didn’t care much for Moreau so I’d like to skip to Munch instead. >:)
I did NOT know the historical context for The Scream, and I feel incredibly betrayed! Today I learned that the background references volcanic eruptions in Krakatoa, Indonesia, resulting in loud explosions and colorful skies seen from miles away. Prof. Plesch commented about how, although also a depiction of an emotion, this painting serves as a depiction of “the scream of nature”. Mind blown.
We then shifted to some Expressionistic works, specifically some Fauvism, through the works of Matisse and Derain. Matisse’s Le Bonheur de Vivre remains to be one of my favorite works of art, ever since I saw it as a child (much to my mother’s dismay, who does not care for Fauvism in general…)! Although the piece has a traditional subject (* a pastoral scene of subjects frolicking in an idealized landscape), it deviates from the norm through its abandoned sense of space, lack of depth, and heavy, linear outlines. The empty space is brightly colored, and serves the function of energizing the canvas. Unlike Romantic works we’ve covered, this work is not about emotion, but for the sheer enjoyment of color.
We covered two Kirchner pieces, but I preferred Peter Schlemihl: Tribulations of Love. I loved how Kirchner put a modern spin on an older medium, executing int in a purposefully clumsy way, conveying the rawness of emotion through the roughness of his technique.
We then covered two Marc works, but again, I had a favorite: Animal Destinies (The Trees Showed Their Rings, The Animals Their Arteries). Very long title by the way. I loved how linear and abstract this painting was. The rays of light convey the dynamism of a “force in nature”, as Prof. put it. I found it interesting how Marc would later refuse to paint human subjects, portraying animals instead, due to his distrust of modern societies.
We covered four Kandinsky works. What really stood out to me was the luminosity of the colors he used, influenced by glass painting. Here, we really see art becoming abstract, or “non-objective expressionism”– we are unsure as to what is being portrayed, as even Kandinsky’s titles refuse to define their subjects.
We concluded with a sneak peek into Cubism with Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. I really loved how I could see Cezanne’s influence here — through the reduction of color scheme and simplification of volumes into crystalline/fractal-like shapes.
Totally forgot to write this entry, whoops! Better late than never, I suppose…
We opened class with Goya’s The Third of May, 1808, which served as a transitional piece for this course, portraying a shift towards a different, more realistic mode from Romanticism through its depiction of a serious, political subject.
We then covered Corot’s View of Rome: The Bridge and Castel S. Angelo with the Cupola of St. Peter’s, which the textbook cited as romantic but Prof. strongly disagreed. Corot’s painting is a reproduction of reality with a soft color scheme. Corot is clearly interested in well-defined forms through his depictions of the geometrical shapes of the circular copula and of the Castel S. Angelo. I particularly like the usage of atmospheric perspective in this painting, the faraway topographical elements are blurrier and more blue.
We then talked about Millet’s The Sower, a depiction of a everyday subject (a peasant), engaged in a basic, universal activity, clothed in a timeless outfit. Millet was sympathetic towards peasants due to his own background growing up as one, and he clearly tries to convey the importance and dignity of the peasant class through this painting. The subject takes up the majority of the large canvas, conveying his importance in an almost monumental representation. The viewer looks up towards the subject, further elevating him. It is clear that the subject is supposed to represent the peasant class as a whole, the backbone of society, through his obscured face, rendering him anonymous and therefore universal.
We covered three Courbet paintings, but my favorite one was The Stone-Breakers. There is painstaking amounts of detail in this painting, from the old-fashioned rags that the laborers wear to the straw used as a cushion under the father figure’s knee as he works, and the pots in the background, presumably what they use for cooking.
Next, we examined Bonheur’s Plowing in the Nivernais: The Dressing of Vines, which was commissioned by the second Republic of France. Unlike other paintings we’ve studied, the subject of this work is not an exotic or powerful animal, but a domesticated, common, and tame one (cows), pictured in labor. The painting encapsulated the idealized charm and appeal of the countryside present during the rapid industrialization of European society at the time.
We covered two Daumier works, but I preferred The Third-Class Carriage. I loved the gritty, dull colors, and how the viewer is placed in the carriage amongst the people. It made me uneasy… in a good way.
To conclude, we covered two American artists: Homer and Eakins, but I particularly liked Homer’s Snap the Whip. I loved the dynamism of this painting and the nostalgia factor. In a time of such rapid industrialization, it is no wonder artists tended to draw more rural scenes.
In this class we discussed the Post-Impressionist movement. The two focuses of the movement were form and personal expression, but both emphasized color. Paul Cézanne, who used the former, painted a series of the same landscape from 1885 to 1887. These landscapes, when compared to Impressionist landscapes were focused more on permanence and less on the fleeting nature of life. Despite being an expansive landscape, the painting appears quite flat due to the paint being applied evenly. The shapes are also simplified and there’s the sense of abstraction and reduction. The painterly style also adds to this effect. In a later landscape, about ten years, of the same area, Cézanne increases the sense of reduction by creating objects into shapes. We then looked at Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, the sense of permanence appears again through the rigidity and formality of the figures and setting. Seurat also chose not to blend the colors himself, but rather let the viewer’s eyes blend them. Moving onto van Gogh and Gauguin, who both focused on personal expression. Both artists used color to express emotion.
What struck me the most from class today was the contrast between individuals who valued formal features like as structure and color and others who emphasized personal, expressive traits in their work.
On the one hand, we have painters like Cézanne and Seurat, who attempted to simplify their themes to their core geometric forms and scientific color correlations. Cézanne’s innovative method of “painting the cylinder, the sphere, the cone” established the groundwork for later abstractions. Seurat’s pointillist method, with its precisely placed dots of pure color, represented a highly ordered, almost mathematical approach to painting. In contrast, Van Gogh and Gauguin preferred an expressive, subjective approach that stressed personal expression over technical considerations. Van Gogh’s Night Café, with its swirling, agitated brushstrokes and skewed perspectives, creates a distinct feeling of psychological tension. And his Self-Portrait, with its intense stare and brilliant, nearly clashing hues, feels like a glimpse into the artist’s own volatile inner life.Gauguin, too, shifted away from realism and toward a more symbolic, emotive approach, as seen by his powerful, flattened shapes and vivid, non-naturalistic palette. For these painters, painting was as much about channeling their emotions and spiritual beliefs as it was about representing the observable world. What I find most appealing about post-impressionism is how it demonstrated the possibility of art existing in the tension between these two poles: formal and expressive, objective and subjective. The variety of methods we witnessed, ranging from Cézanne’s minimalist geometries to Van Gogh’s raw, visceral paintings, reflects the depth and complexity of this period in art.