Rise of the “Inner Element” for Art

As the avant-garde or experimental artists rapidly approached the end of the 19th century, we can see the creative class in Europe embracing a new element to engage the surrounding medium that was Art at the fin de siecle.  The resonance of work from the hands of Vincent, Cezanne, Gauguin and the Impressionists could not and would not be dismissed by the next generation of expressionist artists.  Wassily Kandinsky, in a 1913 article for Der Sturm, wrote:  “The inner element, i.e. the emotion, must exist; otherwise the work of art is a sham.  The inner element determines the form of the work of art.”

Does Kandinsky’s interest in the “inner element/emotion” still have meaning in today’s art world, over a hundred years later?  Your thoughts?

Russian Painter Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky, Composition 7, ca. 1910

John Singer Sargent and Portraiture

As the 19th century was drawing to a close, the experimental or avant-garde painters had begun to exert their new aesthetics on subject matter.  John Singer Sargent, an American ex-patriot artists living in Europe like Whistler, grew tired of portraiture and yearned to explore some of the more elegant aesthetics associated with tonalism in nature.  But his reputation was solidly rooted in portraiture.  Sargent grew increasingly put off by portraiture to the point where he said:  “Every time I paint a portrait, I lose a friend.”  One of Sargent’s disdain for and rejection of  portraiture encompassed the “social” aspect between artist and subject.  Apparently, the demand for “conversation” between the sitter and the artist during modeling sessions became tiresome for Sargent.  Closing his “portrait studio” in 1907, the artist exclaimed:  “Painting a portrait would be quite amusing if one were not forced to talk while working…What a nuisance having to entertain the sitter and to look happy when one feels wretched.”  Curiously enough, In that same year (1907), “Sargent painted his modest and serious self-portrait, his last, for the celebrated self-portrait collection of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.”

What are your thoughts on Sargent’s attitude toward portraiture, the tension he felt “entertaining” the sitter, and his inner voice directing him toward a more tonalist focus?

John Singer Sargent, Self Portrait, 1907

John Singer Sargent, Fumee D’Ambre Gris, 1880

James Whistler and Tonalism During the Fin de Siecle

The American ex-patriot painter and printmaker, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, consciously turned his gaze toward an interest in aesthetic abstraction that he was developing during the end of the 19th century.  Whistler became preoccupied with exploring the formal relations “shared” by Music and Art–specifically the primacy of tonal harmony–which the artist believed ran parallel in both Music and Art.  In the early 1870s, Whistler had returned to portraiture and, when a model failed to show up at his studio one day, the artist enlisted his mother to pose for him instead.  After numerous modeling sessions with his aging mother, the artist needed to compromise his initial intention by allowing her to sit in a rocking chair rather than explore a full length standing pose, Whistler painted what was to become his most recognized work of art.  With this portrait painting, Whistler had succeeded in capturing “the poetry of sight”.  In the 1890 publication The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, Whistler wrote:
“As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.”  Whistler titled this 1872 portrait Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1 and, thanks to some persuasive intervention by Sir William Boxall and other such friends in high places, Whistler was able to get this portrait accepted into the Royal Academy’s exhibition for 1872.  Installed in a poorly lit and unfavorable location, Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1 was summarily dismissed.  Today, however, Whistler’s portrait of his mother Anna Whistler has entered the public’s consciousness to such a degree that it is immensely iconic of popular taste.  Martha Tedeschi has stated:

” Whistler’s Mother, Wood’s American Gothic, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch’s The Scream have all achieved something that most paintings—regardless of their art historical importance, beauty, or monetary value—have not: they communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every viewer. These few works have successfully made the transition from the elite realm of the museum visitor to the enormous venue of popular culture.”

What are your thoughts on Whistler’s primacy of tonal harmony running parallel between Music and Art?

James Whistler, Self Portrait, 1872

James Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1, 1871

Photograph of Ms. Anna Whistler, 1850s

U.S. Postage Stamp of Whistler’s Mother, issued 1934

James A. McNeill Whistler Postage Stamp, issued 1940

 

 

“A Soul that Feels”—Claude Monet and Impressionism

For years the contributions and insights made by Claude Monet to early modernism has been discussed and analyzed through a frame of reference like the following:  “An eye that sees, a hand that obeys and a soul that feels”.  I have long been interested in the artistic/aesthetic process from the mind of the artist (i.e., the eye) and then down the neck, shoulders and arm to the hand.  In Monet’s case, his incredible gaze did not weaken when his vision worked its way down his torso to his hand.  Monet was in complete control/command while painting!  Monet did not lose sight of that first impression from 1869 until his death in 1926.  Monet enabled his audience to experience impressions similar to the ones he himself enjoyed when he took out his prepped canvases and painted directly from nature.  This new style, emerging during the last quarter of the 19th century, was not received well initially.  In fact, the Salon juries continued to deny Impressionist painters from showing or exhibiting their work in the state supported event that was eagerly attended by an “educated” audience.  Logan Pearsall Smith, writing in All Trivia (1931), offered the following remark about the Impressionists:  “The vitality of a new movement in art or letters can be pretty accurately gauged by the fury it arouses.”  Edgar Degas, one of the original Impressionist artists, summed it up a little differently in La Renaissance de l’art francis (1918):  “The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.”  Why do you think the “educated” audience in general and the critics in particular were so reluctant to accept this new style offered by the Impressionists?

Claude Monet, Gare Saint Lazare, 1877

Claude Monet, Gare Saint Lazare, 1877

Theodore Rousseau—Taking Possession of Experiences

Theodore Rousseau, the 19th century French Barbican painter, consciously turned his back on the urban energy of Paris in favor of the rural countryside.  Rousseau was burdened by the financial needs of his family and the growing insaneness of his wife.  It seems that Rousseau needed the quiet of the countryside to deal with the stress inflicted upon him by his needy parents and the unsound/chaotic mind of his wife.  For years the only reprieve Rousseau could find was in the Forest of Fontainebleau near the village of Barbican.  In a letter to La Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1859), Rousseau wrote:  “Do you now see that everything my reason rejects is in direct proportion to everything my heart has desired, and that the vision of the intolerance and the crimes of humanity is as great a force in the production of my art as the store of calm contemplation which I have managed to hoard up since my childhood?”

What are your thoughts on the energies and vitality of the urban environment compared to the calm, peaceful undercurrents normally associated with rural spaces?  Do you see a connection between Rousseau’s conscious choice preferring the countryside to Paris and his work, such as in Under the Birches, Evening?

Theodore Rousseau, Under the Birches, Evening, 1842-43

Gustave Courbet and “Living Art”

In an 1855 exhibition catalogue, Gustave Courbet wrote:  “My aim has been to represent the customs, ideas and look of my time as I see them—in a word, to make a living art.”  For this French Realist painter, “living art” meant subject matter that was both “real and “existing” in the physical world.  For Courbet, the Art of painting tapped into a “physical” language that possessed a vocabulary inherent in “all visible objects”.  If Courbet could see it, he could paint it.  For this artist, the creative act was finding the most “complete expression” for an existing thing, but “never the ability to conceive or create an object”.  Courbet wouldn’t paint an angel because he could not see one!  Courbet enjoyed pushing the boundaries in his art making and relished the notion that he could cause his viewing audience to experience tension and discomfort by putting them far outside their gallery/museum comfort levels.  Such expression was the purview of being an artist in Paris during the middle of the 19th century.  In an 1870 letter to the French Minister of Fine Arts, Courbet proudly offered the following rationale for turning down the Legion d’Honneur award:  “When I die they can only say of me:  He did not belong to any school, or church, or institution, or academy—above all not to any regime, except the regime of liberty.”

What are your thoughts on this French painters understanding of the role of being an artist in Paris during the middle years of the 19th century?  Do you agree or disagree with his vision?

Gustave Courbet, Self Portrait (aka Desparate Man), 1843-45

Gustave Courbet, Portrait of Joanna Heffernan, 1865-66

Francisco Goya—That Most Curious Master

Francisco Goya, the great Spanish realist painter, painted his time with furious insight and truthfulness.  Goya unleashed his powerful array of skill sets onto the canvas with an angry vehemence that still overwhelms his audience to this very day.  Goya would not subdue the outer layer of falsehoods he envisioned on the faces and countenances of his patrons.  If Goya perceived monsters and nightmares as his eyes gazed upon events occurring around him, so be it!  The eyes of this Spaniard could be savage if he witnessed history being stained.  Seamus Heaney, the famed Irish poet and Nobel laureate, caught Goya’s painterly fury in the following stanza from Summer 1969:

“He painted with his fists and elbows,

flourished

The stained cape of his heart as history charged.”

 

What are your thoughts on Goya and his work as viewed through the Seamus Heaney poetic thought?

Francisco Goya, Self Portrait

Francisco Goya, Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, 1797

Francisco Goya, Witches Sabbath

Eugene Delacroix’s Genius

Eugene Delacroix, the preeminent French Romantic painter during the first half of the 19th century, understood that he possessed a gift.  Many artists of the 19th century spoke of “their gift” in terms of skill sets.  No so Delacroix.  In his Journal, the artist wrote the following piece of insight which, now that this Journal has been published, affords us a clearer understanding of the artist’s knowledge of the power of his imagination:  “There is in me something that is often stronger than my body, which is often enlivened by it.  In some people the inner spark scarcely exists.  I find it dominant in me.  Without it, I should die, but it will consume me (doubtless I speak of imagination, which masters and leads me).”  (Journal, 1822)  What are your thoughts on artistic genius?  Does it exist?  If so, do you see it when looking at paintings or sketches by Delacroix?  Some two decades later, the French critic Charles Baudelaire wrote the following in a salon review:  “His works (Delacroix) are poems—and great poems, naively conceived and executed with the usual insolence of genius.”  (Charles Baudelaire, salon review, 1846)  Do you agree that Delacroix’s genius was insolent (i.e., rude and disrespectful)?  Your thoughts?

Photograph of Eugene Delacroix by Nadar

Eugene Delacroix, Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi, 1826

Eugene Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus, 1827

Condemned to Death or Death with Heroic Class…

Between 1786-87,  Jacques Louis David and his close circle of friends were discussing the radical climate in Paris that was calling for rampant political reform.  These conversations included discussions involving the need for radical reform leading to a freer market system and more public commentaries on greater access to self governance.  Much of this political dialogue came together in pictorial form with David painting his famous Death of Socrates in 1787.  This story, drawn from classical Athenian times, develops the last moments of Socrates as he and his students deal with the question of changing beliefs and values to better fit the current condition of the State or accept death without renouncing one’s beliefs.  Socrates chose death.  David portrays Socrates as unyielding in his beliefs/values but indifferent to his death at his own hands.  Inspired by his friend’s ideas on France’s preoccupation with radical reform in the late 1780s, David turned his gaze back to antique Rome in order to find the artist’s muse.  David stated the following value which gives us an insight into the artist’s state of mind:  “To give a body and a perfect form to your thought, this alone is what it is to be an artist.”  (Jacques-Louis David, statement to his pupils, 1796, quoted in David, Le Peintre Louis David, 1880).  What are your thoughts on this 1787 painting in general and do you agree with David that to be an artist you need to “give a body and a perfect form to your thought, that alone is what it is to be an artist”?  Your thoughts?

Jacques Louis David, The Death of Socrates, 1787

 

Welcome to the class blog for Art 472-672 Spring 2015

Hi there!  You made it to the class blog—we are off to a good start!

Very shortly we will turn our gaze to the nineteenth century and the tremendous outpouring of creative activity in the visual arts that paves the way through the latter years of the Age of Enlightenment, the first major incursion into the Industrial Revolution, the embracing of the Age of the Machine and culminating with the rise of the Avant-Garde and early Modernism.  Our first encounter will be with the French neoclassic painter Jacques Louis David.  To being this journey into Davidian classicism, I ask you to reflect on the following statement offered by Stendhal in Le Journal de Paris, 1824:  “The school of David can only paint bodies, it is decidedly inept at painting souls.”  As you assess the various paintings by David, do you find Stendhal’s criticism to be accurate or  erroneous?  I look forward to reading your thoughts!

David, Death of Marat, 1793

David, Madame Recamier, 1800