This course examines how the idea of "the modern" develops at the end of the 18th century in European philosophy and literature, and how being modern (or progressive, or hip) became one of the crucial criteria for understanding and evaluating cultural change. Are we still in modernity, or have we moved beyond the modern to the postmodern?
Paintings I
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Do curso por Wesleyan University
Período Moderno e Pós Moderno (Parte 1)
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Paintings
A Quick Survey of how advanced painting moved toward a consideration of the surface of the canvas and away from a quest for the most realistic representation of the world.
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Michael S. Roth
So this week we're going to be doing something a little differently.
We're reviewing the reading we've done so far and, and the lectures and I hope to
have a discussion with the some of the students in the class with me and some of
our TA's about what we've learned so far. And we'll do that through a Google hangout
I think, to be seen later on. And while we're reviewing and thinking
about the material we've covered in these texts.
I thought I would just show you a very little bit about some of the things that
are happening in the visual arts. Especially in France, I'm going to
concentrate on France today, just so you have a, a sense of the visual art context
that is related to the things we're reading.
And, you know? Those of you who are really interested in
art history. You, of course, can go much deeper into
these subjects than we'll be able to go in, in this, in this little video.
But I hope it gives you some sense of, of what's happening in, in advanced painting
in France in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Sometimes it's good to have some music actually too when you're looking at the
work and we're going to start off with the romantics and you can find on your
computers on YouTube or somewhere else, some Chopin Frederick Chopin to listen to
maybe while you, while you look at the work, it after perhaps you listen to me
talk about it [laugh] a little bit. We're starting off with Eugene Delacroix.
Eugene Delacroix who was born just after the French Revolution in 1798 and he lives
on to 1863. So he, he sees the, the changes going on
in France during the 19th century. And he is identified as with the romantic
school of painting. And, the image you see in front of you is
a self portrait of Delacroix. And you see, already, some of the things
for which he'll be well known. That is a, a, a vibrant use of color.
And a kind of let me call it a cultivation of intensity that we'll see more directly
in the images to follow. Now we start with Delacroix, but you, I
might remind you that Delacroix is reacting against, as all romantics did,
against classicism and neo-classicism in the visual arts.
And so if you want to see the, the kind of painting to which Delacroix was reacting
go, just go on your computer and look for a painting by Ingres.
Ingres, Ingres who's a great portraitist but much more interested in control and,
and perfection of balanced form where Delacroix will be very interested in
emotion and you see this here don't you? In this, in this next image which shows
you scenes of, of violence devastation and it's the, the Death of Sardanapalus is the
name, the name of the picture. And what you see here are the themes that
Delacroix will find so interesting. The themes of violence, of sexuality, and,
and a kind of what, what well, I guess we can call it, exoticism.
That is, Delacroix traveled to North Africa and he was interested in the
nonwestern world. Although he saw it as this world of
heightened emotion, of violence, of otherness, sexuality, and he saw it as.
A violation of the, decorum and order that the classisists were so interested in, in
French painting before the 1830s. So he'll give you another example of that
here the, the massacre of [unknown] this is again a painting that shows you what we
would call in our own time orientalism, that is the ways in which western
intellectuals and artists pictured the non-European in ways that provided
reinforcement of our own notions west, the west's own notions of order, of balance,
and, of, of, of virtue. And so what hear, see here, again, if you
look towards the bottom left of the painting, you see these, this combination
of, of sex and violence, of, of, of intensity, remember that word, the
cultivation of intensity. And this is what Romanticism was known
for. Art should lead to heightened emotion, and
heightened emotion within a bourgeois sphere, middle class sphere, could be
projected onto the other, the, the, in this case the non-Western, the North
African subject matter. It can also be however and here's our next
image is Liberty leading the people, a very famous painting from 1830 this is The
heightened emotion is brought back into the city, right?
Into Paris. This is a painting done in 1830.
Remember in July, 1830 there's a revolution in France.
And it is a revolution that created the, well reinforced the ideal.
Not created the ideal but reinforced the ideal that everybody working together for
the good of the people and for freedom. And see, here you see Marianne, the symbol
of, of, of France, bare-breasted carrying the tricolor flag, leading a ragtag group.
But a, but a group that made up of different kinds of people, right?
You see the working class person on the left of this.
You see the middle class with his hat. You see the young person with pistol
raised. All of whom were storming the barricades
with this emotion that comes from revolutionary fervor, and class
solidarity, class solidarity. Remember Marx later, about 1848.
Would say the, that was the February of 1848 was the Beautiful Revolution.
Well this was even more idealistic notion, this was in 1830, more idealistic version
of revolution. The Beautiful Revolution of class
solidarity. So this painting actually was, was, was
shown in 1848. And, and, and you can still see today I
think in the Louvre, and, it's one of the great examples of political romanticism.
Whereas, the, other images I showed you of other romantic exoticism.
This is romantic political painting. The next artist we're going to look at
briefly is Gustave Courbet. Courbet is identified as a realist
painting, painter and Courbet's, Courbet's realism is a reaction both against the,
the order of the fake order, he would say [laugh] of classicism, but also against
the, the I guess he would say the inauthentic or somehow overdone intensity
of romanticism. Courbet wanted to see into the, into the
real. Into the real, because he thought that by
seeing into the real you could understand the world more.
Fully, and also put yourself in a position to act in the world more successfully.
Courbet was a political artist and he saw art, as, as existing in the context of
class struggle. And in the context, of unmasking,
sentimentalism, bourgeois sentimentalism one might say.
And unmasking that sentimentalism on, on behalf of social change.
Here's I'm showing you now a self portrait of Courbet.
First was a photographic because a photographic portrait because Courbet is
existed that lives in a time when, when photography taken off and that
photographic portrait was by Nodar. Famous mid 19th century photographic
artist and Courbet is born in 1819 and dies in exile in 1877.
This is the desperate self portrait. The artist is a, is a desperate man much
more typical of, of Courbet is this stone breakers the stone breakers which comes he
works on in 1850s and he is very interested in, in showing the everyday and
we'll come back to this word, the everyday, later this semester but to get
away from the exoticism of romanticism and to actually into go out into the world and
find the ordinary. Find, find the beauty and the and the
power of labor of, of work on the land. And of, the, the nonexotic and that was
Courbet. One of the things he did there, and you
can see many of his paintings from the countryside various places on line, one of
the things he was doing there. Was to try to open up the perception of,
of the art-going world to the ordinary people who lived right there in France,
right there in the countryside to underscore Social class as it existed in
the mid nineteenth centruy France. But Courbet didn't only do the working
class and the people. He also liked to do outrageous paintings.
Paintings. This was called, sometimes called The
Sleepers, sometimes called The Friends, and this was a painting that resulted in a
police report for Courbet and it gave him kind of infamous [laugh] reputation and
into the 1860s. Courbet, his subject matter becomes more
frankly anti-conventional, anti-bourgeoise.
And you can see why an artist like Baudelaire would be interested in
Courbet's willingness to, to depict the kinds of subjects that maybe the bourgeois
gentlemen dream about but wouldn't normally see in a gallery.
His most notorious painting, done in the 1860s, is called the Origin of the World,
L'Origine du Monde. But I'm not going to show it to you
because some people might find it still today offensive.
It's a, a very detailed painting of the female genitalia and, and wasn't actually
shown. And in public until much later in the 20th
century and you can find it easily enough on your own, online.
But more typical of Courbet's style and more influential of his work is something
like this, the, this, is, a funeral, painting, burial at Arnot.
Which is a gigantic painting 314x663 centimeters its at the [unknown] in Paris
and again Courbet trying to return the painter's gaze to the ordinary and also to
show in the form of the painting an attentiveness to surface and attentiveness
to painting itself. That is not only of depiction, not only of
realism but the painter increasing willingness to show you not just a window
on a world, on the world. But to show you a painting self-conscious,
a painting self-conscious of it's own painterly-ness, if I could put it that way
for a moment and then as we move to this next artist you'll see more of what I
mean.
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