Chapter 29
The Rise of Modernism
The Late Nineteenth Century
Industrialization
• First industrial revolution c. 1750-1825
• Mechanization of textiles with steam power
• Production of iron and its use in new building
technologies
• Second industrial revolution c. 1875-1900
• Mechanization of other industries using
electricity
• Steel used in building created possibility of the
high-rise structure.
Industrialization: Human Factors
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Migration of population to urban centres.
Increase in size and number of cities.
Decrease in the number of farms.
Increase in size of remaining farms.
More work in cities, especially in factories
Urban working poor faced abysmal living and
working conditions.
• No health care, weekends, job security,
retirement
The City
• Increasing size of cities creates completely
different landscape
• Decreasing amounts of vegetation,
greenspacewithin city changes health of
individuals
• Rise of air pollution
• City becomes map for people’s lives
• Working poor are born, live, and die within an
area of a few city blocks
• The city determines one’s loyalties, work,
language, social network, etc.
The Communist Manifesto
• Published by Marx and Engels in 1848.
• Called for the urban working class to overthrow the
capitalist system.
• Stated that economic forces determine historical change.
• Control of economy based on control of the means of
production.
• Bourgeoisie controlled the means of production—the rich
get richer, the poor are exploited.
• Creation of theory of class conflict.
• The avante garde is a communist idea – the vanguard of
the revolution.
Imperialism
• Establishment of colonial empires all over the world by
England, France, Spain, Holland, Germany.
• Economic Imperialism includes United States in China
and Japan.
• Racial and National hierarchies determined the
superiority of Europe and America over Africa and Asia.
• France controlled North Africa and Indochina; British
were in India, Australia, much of Africa; the Dutch control
Indonesia; Portugese and Spanish in Africa and South
America; the Germans and Italians have colonies in
Africa.
• Aboriginal art from these colonies is brought back to 19th
century Europe and has a strong impact on artists there.
Modernity:
The State of Being Modern
• The transient state of world contributes to
people’s unease with present conditions.
• A sense of history becomes essential—a
distinct “past” gives hope for a future.
• Art embraces modernity by becoming selfcritical.
• Artists begin to embrace the idea of art as
a process.
• Illusionism is rejected for social realism.
Modernism
• As an art movement, modernism seeks to
capture the images and sensibility of the age.
• Involves the artist with the production and
process of art. The artist becomes more
important than the patron.
• It calls attention to the artwork as artwork—the
fact that all painting is paint on a flat surface,
before it is a person, bowl of fruit, etc.
• “Modernism used art to call attention to art”—
Clement Greenberg.
Artistic Style: Realism
• An attempt by artists to present what is “real” in
their art.
• Overt rejection of all traditional subject matter.
• No history painting, religious works, heroic
battles, ancient subjects.
• “Show me an angel and I’ll paint one”—
Courbet.
• No allegories, angels, gods, goddesses,
Socrates, Homer, Caesar.
• Attention given to non-classical, non-historic
subjects.
Realism -How to use this word
• When discussing a painting, NEVER use
the word “realistic” to describe how closely
it imitates the natural world.
• Use illusionistic to describe a painting that
seems to look much what one would see
in real life or in a photograph.
29-1 Courbet,
The Stonebreakers, 1849
29-2 Courbet,
Burial at Ornans, 1849
29-3 Millet The Gleaners,1857
29-6 Daumier, Third Class
Carriage,1862
The Salon
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An art exhibit held annually in Paris
Judged by members of the Academie Francaise
Source of lucrative commissions.
Paintings purchased by bougeois patrons.
Rejected paintings were marked refusé on back
of canvas
• Artists’ careers were made or broken by
acceptance/rejection.
• Manet did have his work accepted, may have
reflected his social class.
• Rules seemed arbitrary.
The Salon des Refusés
• In 1863, works of artists not accepted by the
Salon jury were given their own (separate)
showing.
• The Salon des Refusés included such works by
Manet as the Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon
on the Grass) and Olympia.
• People were so shocked by these works, and
later by the Impressionists, that people were
warned to stay away from the exhibit.
29-7 Manet, Luncheon on the
Grass, 1863
29-7 Manet, Olympe, 1865 –
Refusé!
29-10 Rosa Bonheur
The Horse Fair, 1853-55
29-14 John Everett Millais,
Ophelia,1852
Impressionism
• In 1874 the Independent Society of Painters and
Sculptors mounted their own exhibition in
opposition to the Salon (165 works, 33 artists).
• Eight Impressionist exhibits were held until 1886.
• Berthe Morisot was the only artist to have work
in every Impressionist exhibit.
• “Impressionism” was a derogatory term applied
to the work of these artists.
29-17 Monet,
Impression: Sunrise, 1872
29-18 Monet
Saint LazareTrain Station, 1877
29-19 Caillebotte,
Paris: A Rainy Day
29-20 Edgar Degas
Viscount Lepic and His Daughters, 1873
29-25 Edgar Degas
The Dance Class
29-27 Berthe Morisot
Villa at the Seaside, 1874
29-28 Claude Monet
Rouen Cathedral, 1892-1894z
29-29 Edgar Degas, The Tub
29-30 Mary Cassatt, The Bath,
1892
Two Bathers
29-31 Henri de Toulouse Lautrec
At the Moulin Rouge 1892-5
Post-Impressionism
• Catch-all term for the art of Van Gogh, Gaugin,
Seurat, Cézanne, etc.
• Systematic study of line, colour, pattern, and
form.
• Initial acceptance of Impressionism by these
artists.
• Eventual rejection of Impressionism as too
transitory, a “dead end”—no ability to draw.
29-33 Van Gogh, The Night
Café,1888
29-34 Van Gogh, Starry Night,1889
29-35 Gaugin
The Vision after the Sermon, 1888
29-37 Georges Seurat
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande
Jatte, 1897
29-39 Cézanne
Monte Sainte Victoire, 1902-1904
The Avant-Garde
• Originally used to denote artistic works that were ahead
of their time (borrowed from military, political usage).
• Artistic conventions—the academic—consistently
rejected in each successive art movement of the late
19th century.
• Awareness of the medium
• Self awareness of artist
• Search for the next thing—the present is already past
•Increasing disengagement from the public—thus
rejecting the “modernist” as part of social world of the
present.
The Symbolists
• Interpretation of what the artist sees; not a “representation” of what he/she sees.
• The fact must be transformed into a symbol of the inner
idea or experience of the fact.
• To see beyond the real, to see the deeper significance of
events, ideas, things.
• Art as experience of the interior life, wholly alternate,
wholly other than reality.
• 1899 Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of
Dreams.
• "I believe only in what I do not see." Gustave Moreau.
• Antithetical to Courbet and the Realists.
29-45 Edvard Munch
The Scream (The Cry), 1893
Georges Braque, Harbour, 1904
Georges Braque, Harbour in
Normandy
Matisse, The Bathers
Matisse, The Dance
Kandinsky, Composition IV
Picasso, Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon
Picasso, Ma Jolie