MODULE 8: 18th c. & 19th c.Art in europe: Romanticism & Realism, Chapt. 26 & 27

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 Modules: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

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To a greater extent than in the past, schools of style describe an intellectual convenience of categories, where artists themselves began to author uniquely individual styles making problematic any effort to group them together.

Romanticism- is just one of these problems of classification. One may say of Romanticism, that it was the antithesis of Enlightenment; it focused on a revival of past styles. There was a revulsion of established values, order and religion; a desire to ‘return to an ‘unbounded, wild, and ever changing Nature,’ heightened emotion- love and violence.

Realism- (also called French Naturalism) had both radical political and modern aesthetic aspects. French poet C. Baudelaire called for paintings to express “the heroism of modern life.” These ideas can best be seen in work of the Barbizon School, in which rural landscapes and country life predominated.

Romanticism-

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SLIDE:
Hogarth “The Marriage Contract” (1745) Pl. 26-32

Social commentary was not unique to the late 17th century. What was different was the tolerance of social criticism. Hogarth’s painting “The Wedding Contract,” exposes the hypocrisy of the ‘sagging’ aristocracy after the French Revolution, selling all they have left- their name to the new entrepreneurial Europe. In Hogarth’s painting the young girl sadly awaits her fate as her wealthy proletariat father pays the foppish groom’s father to marry his wastrel son to her only so she’ll have a prestigious name.

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SLIDE:
West “The Death of General Wolfe” (1770) Pl. 26-37

Romanticized political and social propaganda became significant in the arts of the late 18th and early 19th century. In West’s painting, he aggrandized the moment of General Wolfe’s death as if it was a theatrical stage set with posed actors. This painting set the style for all such hagiographic works to come.

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SLIDE:
Fuseli “The Nightmare” (1781) Pl. 26-38

“The Nightmare” is a romantic painting that differs significantly from the kind of art that Benjamin West produced, from the reasoned rationality of the Enlightenment era of Neo-Classicism. It is a style that is a precursor to the Modern era- of the irrational, erotic and psychological.

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SLIDE:
Blake “Elohim Creating Adam” (1795) Pl. 26-39

Much as with Fuseli’s work, Blake eschews the rationality of the Enlightenment. In their search for meaning outside of reason, artists such as William Blake, expressed a moralizing idealism. Blake’s idiosyncratic interpretations of biblical themes suggest some forms of delusion associated with mental illness. Culturally, this was a time of religious fragmentation and the development of many new Christian sects.

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SLIDE:
Gericault “Raft of the ‘Medusa’” (1819) Pl. 27-6

Where I commented earlier about the humorous social commentary of Hogath, here with Gericault, is the biting criticism that would become a major part of modern journalism. The “Medusa” though painted stylistically ‘heroic,’ is a specific indictment of the captain and his crew who abandoned their passengers to a sinking ship and their fate.

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SLIDE:
Goya “Third of May 1808” (1815) Pl. 27-17

Goya tried to ‘play both sides against the middle.’ That is, as a respected court painter, he painted the aristocracy at play and at the same time, in drawings for newspapers recorded the result of their indifference to the suffering of the Spanish people. His painting “Third of May 1808,” is both reportage and moralizing regarding a specific event in which the common people were the unwitting victims of the atrocities of war.

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SLIDE:
Turner “The Fighting ‘Temeraire’…” (1838) Pl. 27-20

Turner’s work defied contemporary classification. It suggested some of the social moralizing of Hogarth, the mystical perceptions of other Romantic artists, and it was perhaps a precursor to Impressionism. His personal life was similarly fragmented, contradictory and cryptic.

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Realism-

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SLIDE:
Constable “The White Horse” (1819) Pl. 27-21

Romantics conceptually, the new Realist artists such as Constable sought to record nature objectively. Conceptually many of these artists had turned to nature as an antithesis to what they saw as the corruption of urban life. This criticism of urban life continued as a fundamental avant-garde theme to the end of the 20th century.

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SLIDE:
Bonheur “Plowing in the Nivernais: the Dressing of the Vines” (1849) Pl. 27-46

Rosa Bonheur’s Realist images of rural farm-life expressed the nobility of the labors of both man and beast. This image actually belies a fundamental social agenda. The facility of her art hides her proto-feminist ideals, her socialist emphasis, and her professionalism, perhaps careerism.

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SLIDE:
Millet “The Gleaners” (1857) Pl. 27-47

Millet, in spite of his own conservative views, was seen as another socialist voice. The French public took his images of the poverty of common existence as symbolic of the oppressed and downtrodden.

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SLIDE:
Courbet “The Stone Breakers” (1849) Pl. 27-48

Gustave Courbet’s significant ego could be overshadowed by his more significant political agenda. The “Stone Breakers” shows his sympathies for the plight of the lowliest workers- a boy too young for this kind of toil and a man too old.

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SLIDE:
Courbet “A Burial at Ornans” (1849) Pl. 27-49

Courbet’s painting of a provincial funeral was so out of context for the critics of Paris that they ridiculed what they saw as his personal arrogance at such an insult to French aesthetic sensibilities. What their reaction, more significantly, was based on was the rising political presence of the rural Republican voters- a direct threat to the urban aristocracy.

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