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I. Modernism in the Arts
a. Since Renaissance artists tried to represent reality as accurately as possible, by 19th, artists wanted new forms of expression
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Impressionalism
- i. Originated in France in 1870s when a group of artists rejected the studios and museums and went out into the countryside to paint nature directly
- 1. Subjects were figures from daily life, nature, etc.
- Sought originality and distinction from past artworks
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Camille Pissarro
Claude Monet
- i. Camille Pissarro: one Imporessionalism founder
- 1. Pissarro and others sought to put impressions of changing effects of lights on obnects in their paintings
- ii. Claude Monet
- 1. Enchanted with water and painted many pictures trying to capture interplay of light, water and atmosphere: Impression, Sunrise
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Berthe Morisot
- 1. Broke with the practice of women being only amateur and became professional
- a. Her art won her the disfavor of the traditional French academic artists
- Young Girl by the Window
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Post Impressionalism
- i. Emerged in France and spread to other European countries
- ii. Retained impressionist emphasis on light and color but revolutionaized it even further by paying more attention to structure and form
- 1. Post-impressionaists sought ot use both color and line to express inner feelings and produce a personal statement of reality rather than an imitation of objects
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Impressionist paintings
- i. Impressionist paintings retained sense of realism, but the Post-Impressionist painting shifted to subjective reality and began to withdraw from the artists’ traditional task of depicting the external world
- ii. Real beginning of modern art
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Paul Cezanne
- 1. Influenced by Impressionists but rejected it
- 2. Mont Saiinte-Victoire: he tried to express visually the underlying geometric structure and form of everything he painted
- a. Pressed wet bbursh on canvas
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Vincent van Gogh
- 1. Art was spiritual experience
- 2. Interested in color and believed it could act as its own language
- 3. Artists should paint what they feel= Starry Night
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Search for Individual Expression
- i. By beginning of 19th, the belief that the task of art was to represent “reality” lost meaning
- 1. Psychology and new phsyics made it evidnent that many people didn’t know what reality waws
- ii. Photography became popular and widespread after George Eastman produced the first Kodak camera for the mass market in 1888
- iii. Still, while camera only mirrored reality, artists created realityà wide variety of schools of painting (all impacted after WWI)
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1905
- i. 1905: one of most important figures in modern art was beginning his career: Pablo Picasso
- 1. From Spain, but settled in Paris
- 2. Extremely flexible and painted varietyà Cubism: geometric designs as visual stimuli to re-create reality in the viewer’s mind
- a. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: first Cubist painting
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Modern artist's
- i. Modern artist’s flight from visual reality reached high point in 1910 with beginning of abstract painting
- 1. Wassily Kandinsky: Russian in germany
- a. One of founders; Square with White Border
- i. Avoided representation
- 1. Believed art should speak directly to soul
- a. Avoid reference to visual reality and concentrate on color
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