Toward the Modern Era:
1870-Early 1900’s
The Growing Unrest
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Belle époque
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Was a period in European history that began during the late
19th century and lasted until World War I. Occurring during the
time of the French Third Republic and the German Empire, the
Belle Époque was considered a "golden age" as peace prevailed
between the major powers of Europe, new technologies
improved people's lives, and the commercial arts adopted
modern forms
Growing frustration, restlessness
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Economic disparity, resentment
Population growth
Capitalism vs. Socialism
Loss of religious security
Liberty Enlightening the World (French:
La liberté éclairant le monde), known
more commonly as the Statue of Liberty
(Statue de la Liberté), is a large statue
that was presented to the United States
Dedicated on October 28, 1886,
by France in 1886
commemorates the centennial of the
United States and is a gesture of
friendship from France to the U.S.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the
statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful
for raising construction funds through the
sale of miniatures. Alexandre Gustave
Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower)
engineered the internal structure. Eugène
Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the
1889
choice of copper in the statue's
construction and adoption of the repoussé
technique.
New Movements in the Visual Arts

Édouard Manet (1832-1883)
Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (1863)
 A Bar at the Folies-Bergére (1882)

 Break
from tradition
 View of the artist
Characteristics of Impressionism Style
•Not too much structure
•Ephemeral moment that is captured
•Moment captured as it fades from site
•Reflection of light on water, like sunrise/sunset
•An illusion
•Visible brushstrokes
•Inclusion of movement
Turner – 1834-fire
Monet - 1903
Sunrise by
Monet,
Impressionism
Monet’s Water Lillies (The Clouds)
Edgar Degas
Orchestra Musicians
1870
Self Portrait with
Bandaged Ear
1869
Van Gogh
New Movements in the Visual Arts
Impressionism

Realism of light, color
 Fidelity
to visual perception, “innocent eye”
 Devotion to naturalism

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

Impression: Sunrise (1872)
New Movements in the Visual Arts
Impressionism

Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
 Beauty
of the world, happy activity
 Women as symbols of life
 Le Moulin de la Galette (1876)

Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
 Intimate
moments as universal experience
 Psychological penetration
 “Keyhole visions”
New Movements in the Visual Arts
Impressionism

Female Impressionist painters
 Mary
Cassatt (1844-1926)
 Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)
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Rodin’s Impressionist sculpture

The Kiss (1886)
New Movements in the Visual Arts
Post-Impressionism
Rejection of Impressionism
 Personal artistic styles

 Georges
Pierre Seurat (1859-1891)
 Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)
New Movements in the Visual Arts
Post-Impressionism

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
 Impose
order on nature
 Priority of abstract considerations
 Mont Sainte-Victoire (1904-1906)

van Gogh’s Starry Night (1889)
 Autobiographical,
pessimistic art
 Social, spiritual alienation
New Movements in the Visual Arts
Fauvism
“Les Fauves”
 Loss of traditional values of color, form
 Distortion of natural relationships
 Henri Matisse, The Red Studio (1911)
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New Movements in the Visual Arts
Expressionism
Alarm and hysteria
 Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893)
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 Autobiographical,
social, psychological

Antonio Gaudí, Casa Milá (1907)

Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter
 Emotional
impact, alienation and loneliness
 Heckel (1883-1970), Nolde (1867-1956)
New Styles in Music
Early Nineteenth-Century
Orchestral Music

Communication beyond musical values
 New
treatment of melody, harmony, rhythm
 Composer’s inner emotions, autobiography
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Program music
 Symphonic,
tone poems
 Narrative + musical interests
Silhouettes / calling cards /
camera lucida
Silhouette portraits were fashionable
around the year 1800
 The term comes from Etienne de
Silhouette.

Artists – Love/Hate Relationship with
Photography, like Gaugin - copied native art from
travel photography – very famous
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1891 and 1892 paintings - Tahiti
"Photography" is derived from the Greek words photos
("light") and graphein ("to draw") The word was first used
by the scientist Sir John F.W. Herschel in 1839. It is a
method of recording images by the action of light, or
related radiation, on a sensitive material. On a summer
day in 1827, it took eight hours for Joseph Nicéphore
Niépce to obtain the first fixed image.
About the same time a fellow Frenchman, Louis Jacques
Mandé Daguerre was experimenting to find a way to
capture an image, but it would take another dozen years
before he was able to reduce the exposure time to less
than 30 minutes and keep the image from disappearing…
ushering in the age of modern photography.
Alfred Stieglitz The Terminal, New York , 1892
Alfred Stieglitz
Winter on Fifth Avenue, New York
1893
Ansel Adams – 1927 and 1932
Galloping Horse – All four legs
in the air?
Eadweard Muybridge
Ascending Stairs
1884-85
Étienne-Jules Marey, French
physician, inventor

Motion Photography – around 1888.
Lumiere Brothers – French
Auguste and Louie
Arrival of A Train – 12/28/1895.
Grand Café Screening – people terrified.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk
A Trip to the Moon – Melies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0BmQaIIR4&NR=1
Lumiere Brothers - More
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“Cinema is an invention without any future”
and declined to sell their camera to other
filmmakers such as Georges Méliès.
Consequently, their role in the history of film
was exceedingly brief.
They turned their attentions to color
photography and in
A Trip to the Moon by Melies-The Father of Special Effects
Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI9OaZHxk64&feature=related
Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjjTAuh2ACY
New Styles in Music
Early Nineteenth-Century
Orchestral Music

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Don Juan
 Till Eulenspiegel
 Alpine Symphony
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 Operas
 Autobiographical
compositions
New Styles in Music
Impressionism in Music

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
 Changing
flow of sound, shifting tone colors
 Ethereal, intangible, refined
 Natural atmospheres, Der Mer
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Maurice Joseph Ravel (1875-1937)
 Classical
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form, balance
Daphnis and Chloe
New Styles in Music
Search for a New Musical Language
Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951)
 Expressionistic atonal music
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Pierrot Lunaire (1912), Sprechstimme
Twelve-tone technique (serialism)
 Row,
inversion, retrograde, retrograde
inversion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-WVtoAykS4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HlFZlLprMw
New Styles in Music
Search for a New Musical Language
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
 The Rite of Spring (1913)
 “the
destruction of music as an art”
 Russian folk subjects

Changing, complex, violent rhythms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe9_bszUQQs
New Subjects for Literature
Psychological Insights in the Novel

Nature of individual existences
 The

subconscious and human behavior
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)
 Concern
for psychological truth
 Human suffering, salvation

Crime and Punishment
New Subjects for Literature
Psychological Insights in the Novel

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
 Irony
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and satire, passivity and emptiness
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

Remembrance of Things Past
 Evocation
of memory
 Stream of consciousness style
Responses to A Changing Society:
The Role of Women

Family life, society at large
 Right

to vote, marriage ties
Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879)
 Criticism

of anti-feminist social conventions
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899)
 Sexuality
as liberation from oppression