Week Five: Post #5 (Modernity and Masculinity in 19th Century France)

I will be discussing the difference between the work of Gustave Caillebotte specifically Floorscrapers, 1875 and an impressionist work of Claude Monet On The Bank Of The Seine, Bennecourt, 1868. In the work of Caude Monet he is taking realism to an extreme while Caillebotte’s work seems to align itself more with realism. A clear line can be drawn between Floorscrapers and the work of Gustave Courbet in The Stone Breakers. Both pieces focus on the monotony and darkness of real work and the working class. Both images depict men down on the ground grinding it out in hard repetitive work. This contrasts Monet’s depiction of a seemingly rich bourgeois woman enjoying a beautiful afternoon without work or obligation. I find the Floorscrapers piece to be an amazing study of light and its effect in a poorly lit or unlit room. However it is not a scientific snapshot of the way that light effects reflection and shadow in the way that the Monet piece On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt does.

The Monet piece is a textbook example of impressionist painting featuring an outdoor depiction of urbanized Paris depicting a split second in time. Perhaps the woman sitting on this bank only sat down for a brief moment and surly the boats moved out of the frame moments later. Yet comparatively in the Caillebotte painting this has the weight and feeling of an activity that goes on all day or perhaps even days on end. In Contrast as well, this is an indoor scene, it reminds me again of the grittiness of realism because it shows reality. In order for these outdoor scenes of modernized, industrialized paris to exist the reality of the floorscrapers is what had to happen.

The Monet piece is painted in plein air and alla prima with speed and impasto brush strokes. While Caillebotte’s painting seems to have much more time spent with a thinner application of paint, again it is depicted indoors. Comparitivly the Floorscrapers also features illusionism in perspective with the room tilted up as in the woodblock prints from Japan while Monet’s piece features very straightforward linear perspective. Floorsrapers also depicts half naked men showing more of the academic interests in the celebration of the human form and nudity. Comparatively Monet depicts a woman very modestly covered.  While Caillebotte is aligning himself more with certain stylistic aspects that fit more with the academy, the way that the men’s faces are turned down and obscured by darkness would not have been approved of by the academy. It has that in common with the work of Claude Monet, I suppose that neither composition would have sat well with members of the academy. Both pieces seem to be inspired by photography.  Based on the cropping of each composition, the way the window and man on the left are cropped halfway in the Floorsrapers and the way that Monet’s piece looks like it is perfectly framed for a photograph. In conclusion while these paintings are similar in style, yet when examined more closely they are very different. They may draw from some of the same influences however the work of Caillebotte seems to me to have much more depth in composition.

Week Four- Monet vs. Manet

I will be Considering two paintings that depict the French festival of June 30^th, 1878. One being Claude Monet’s The Rue Montorgueil Festival, of 30^th June 1878 and the other being Edouard Manet’s The Rue Mosnier with Flags.  First of all Monet’s painting depicts a heavily crowded street the composition is so filled with people and three colored flags that the building and perspective end up taking a back seat to the movement and energy of the celebration.  France was celebrating that it was now on its feet, the city was now rebuilt and returned to its former glory or at least that is what they wanted to celebrate.  The Rue Montorgueil Festival of 30^th June 1878 is a very energetic and celebratory composition; there are so many people that they are reduced to being depicted by only black lines. It features thick seemingly quick application of paint that helps capture the celebratory atmosphere. According to the challenge of the avant-garde “If anything can be said to represent a sense of unalloyed celebration, then it is surely this spectacle of dancing colours, wherein the painting almost becomes itself a tricolour waved by the artist as the crowd waves its flags.” The perspective of Monet’s painting also lends itself to this feeling of celebration the view hovers high above the people on the ground and the buildings continue much higher up into the sky and continue on as far as the eye can see, thus leaving the viewer in awe of the magnificence of France in 1878, believing that everything is now perfect.

In contrast to the celebration of Monet’s Painting is Edouard Manet’s The Rue Mosnier with Flags. This composition gives a different feeling entirely it depicts a much quieter street still with tricolour flags everywere, but instead of a massive crowd it shows a crippled veteran in workers clothing and other figures that seem to me much more somber in attitude perhaps escaping the craziness of other areas of the city. Manet was more associated with realism and it is easy to see the raw reality of the other side of this celebration. Manet was known for using a stark juxtaposition of colors specifically black and white and he does so in this composition outlining the veteran in black and the openness of the street in contrast with the figures and the street light and carriage. The politics of the situation are addressed more in this painting perhaps because Manet himself saw firsthand the devastation of this conflict. The view is lower to the ground and the subject matter is somber and real. This is how Manet is able to both aspects of avant-gardism being political both in aesthetic and radicalism. In the end both painting are in the style of impressionism and both have similar paint application and subject matter however these are two very different paintings that have two entirely different moods in the same city on the same exact day just like reality. A celebration of the end of something that Manet was not anxious to forget.

Week Three: Post #3 (Impressionism)

For my formal analysis of an impressionist painting I will be writing about Paris Street, Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte. The painting depicts an intersection of streets in Paris on a rainy day with people out and about underneath umbrellas. This painting in my opinion embodies many of the important characteristics of Impressionistic painting. It is an excellent example of the influence of realism on impressionist works.

 According to Stokstad, Caillebotte uses an “unconventional, almost telescopic composition that tilts the perspective.” This leads me to believe that this composition is undoubtedly inspired and influenced by the invention of photography and realism. In my opinion through the perspective and the way you see off far into the distance is very much like the effect the glass of a camera lens might give, breaking it away from perfect linear perspective. Also the way that the scene is cropped is very much the way a camera would cut off a plane instead of thoughtfully placing each building and figure perfectly into the scene. This image is not just inspired by realism it is a new form of “extreme realism” it is a snapshot of a frozen moment depicting exactly what was happening that instant in Paris in 1877. Not only showing the period but a specific instant. This is seen in the glance to the side of the couple in the foreground mid stride, and all of the figures in the painting depicted frozen in motion.

Compared to works of the academy Caillebotte uses very loose brushstrokes. The composition is much more painterly and loose than what was thought of as professional perfect painting at the time and previously in history. While the scene is very tight as far as line is concerned there is much more texture in the way the objects in the foreground are depicted in comparison to the super clean and smooth historic paintings of the day. Caillebotte painted with more of an Impasto technique and you can see especially in the cobble stone street the much thicker application of paint.

I would consider this painting to be a study on the effects of muted light and reflection. It really shows how the light reacts on different surfaces like the difference between the cobble stones and the sidewalk and the fabric on the umbrella. I love the way that the shadow of the streetlight is obscured by the water and light on the sidewalk. These effects of light are rendered very nicely through the use of the impasto technique. The light and dark contrast is shown off very nicely in the figures in the foreground faces. I love the way the man’s face is much lighter below his eyes and in comparison to the way the light is obscuring the woman’s face and body.

Another reason this composition is a wonderful example of impressionistic painting is that it is depicting an outdoor scene in Paris with modern people. This scene could be considered a celebration of modernity through the way it is showing Paris Plein air (painted outdoors) and also through the immediacy of the composition (alla prima) showing the scene as if time has stopped. The composition is weighted very heavily on the right but the way that the street recedes into the distance on the left seems to make up the difference and give the composition a great sense of balance. The strange perspective helps to balance the composition allowing space for the sky on the top half. The road seems to be at the crest of a small hill the way it recedes off into the distance and then tapers to the right and left.

Overall I would say that there is no arguing that this painting, Paris Street, Rainy Day is an excellent example of impressionist painting. It depicts a modern scene with thick heavy brushstrokes while playing and experimenting with the effects light on different surfaces and reflections. The painting seems to be created alla prima or at once like a photograph, depicting a frozen moment celebrating the beauty and modernity of Paris even in the rain. The composition shows its influence of realism and even takes it further into hyper realism freezing almost every figure in the composition mid stride. In the end I find this scene an excellent example of impressionist painting.

Week Two: Post #2 (Realism and the Early Avant-Garde)

Gustave Courbet was working ahead of the bourgeois art society. The world in which Gustave Courbet lived was a cruel and unfair one, dominated by the rich. Art was created only for the rich, depicting only the things that they wanted to see.  Only classical imagery depicting mythological images or images from the past where depicted. If you wanted to see paintings that represented current times it was going to be a portrait of some rich guy or most likely a landscape of something he owned. In light of this Gustave Courbet and some other artists of the period began to paint what they could see. In doing so they did not only see a beautiful world of the supper rich, they saw poor people struggling to survive with almost nothing to help them, and the upper class working against them. 

Gustave Courbet called himself a realist and so when he came across and old man and a boy breaking rocks on the side of the road he just had to paint them in The Stone Breakers. Through this work and The Burial at Ornans Courbet was able to really upset the bourgeoisie. Everything about what he was doing was radically different to what was being depicted at that time in history.

Some things that were different about Courbet’s painting that would have really upset the status quo are first of all the size and scale of these paintings. It was bad enough that he wanted to depict these common poor people at all but he did so, on a grand scale five by eight feet for The Stonebreakers and a massive ten by twenty one feet for A Burial at Ornans. These large sized paintings were reserved for depictions of great historical and mythical characters not the common man. Also the subjects in The Stone Breakers faces are obscured and turned away from the viewer which is very different than the way the academy would paint a picture with the faces being of utmost importance facing straight ahead always. In the depiction of the funeral, this is not the burial of a rich man and it has no illusion of grandeur. It is a sad and awkward moment with common people burying a common man, not some sort of hero or royalty.

While being extremely politically radical Gustave Courbet’s paintings were also technically radical. This is shown in some of the first avant-garde methods of the day with rough application of paint and some disinterest in perspective and illusionistic depth.

Courbet also filled up his canvas with the figures he was depicting and cropped his scenes in a way that appears to be influenced by photography. These things were very different from the landscapes of the day absent of figures or extremely small and of little importance. Courbet also put his figures into motion or awkward yet realistic poses in contrast to the work of the academy that placed every figure perfectly to show them off and display their perfection. In all of these ways and more Gustave Courbet was purposefully trying to uproot the traditions of the day and did so very effectively and pointedly. Eventually being barred from the salon and putting up his own installation near by which eventually led to others breaking off as well.