Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [74]
Pollock, “Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist),” 1950, NG, Washington, DC. Around 1947 Pollock abandoned paint brushes and easel painting, putting his canvas on the floor and pouring paint without premeditation. This process, prompted by the subconscious and incorporating chance effects, created an all-over pattern of lines and drips that eliminated accepted ideas of composition like focal point, background, and foreground. Pollock’s breakthrough gave unprecedented freedom to artists and moved the avant-garde capital from Paris to New York.
THE MOVEMENT. Impressionism arose around 1862 when Renoir, Monet, Bazille, and Sisley were students in the same Parisian studio. Exceptionally close-knit because of their common interest in painting nature out-of-doors, they took excursions together to paint with the Barbizon artists. When urged by a teacher to draw from antique casts, the young rebels dropped formal course work. “Let’s get out of here,” Monet said. “The place is unhealthy.” They claimed Manet as their hero, not for his style but for his independence. Rejected by the gatekeepers of officialdom, in 1874 the Impressionists decided to show their work as a group — the first of eight cooperative shows.
Their work differed drastically from the norm both in approach and technique. Painting from start to finish in the open air was their modus operandi; the usual method of sketching outside, then carefully finishing a work in the studio was, for them, a heresy. Their use of light and color rather than meticulously drawn form as guiding principles was also considered shocking. This new work had no discernible narrative content; it didn’t rehash history but portrayed instead a slice of contemporary life or a flash snapshot of nature. And how unkempt the Impressionist version of nature appeared! Landscapes were supposed to be artificially arranged a la Claude with harmoniously balanced hills and lakes. Composition for the Impressionists seemed nonexistent, so overloaded was one side of the canvas, with figures chopped off by the picture frame.
FIRST IMPRESSIONISM
PERIOD:1862-86
ORIGINAL CAST: Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley, Morisot, Cassatt
SUBJECTS: Outdoors, seaside, Parisian streets and cafés
PURPOSE: To portray immediate visual sensations of a scene
Fantin-Latour, “L‘Atelier des Batignolles,” 1870, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Manet’s Gang. The still life painter fantin-Latour celebrated Monet’s role as leader of french avant-garde artists with this group portrait at Monet’s studio, or “atelier. ” Monet is at the easel with the German painter Scholderer standing behind and writer Astru seated for his portrait. On the right (from left) are Renoir, Zola, Edmond Maitre, Bazille, and Monet. The word “Batignolles” in the title refers to a section of Montmartre in Paris where the Impressionist painters gathered to debate art. Since they painted only during daylight hours, in the evenings they met at the Café Guerbois. Manet presided over this group of renegade painters Degas, Cézanne, Sisley, Renoir, fantin-Latour, Bazille, Pissarro, and Monet, known as “Manet’s gang.” Monet recalled, “From [these evenings] we emerged with a firmer will, with our thoughts clearer and more distinct. ” 1869 was the turning point. Renoir and Monet then worked side by side outdoors with their portable easels and traveling paint boxes. They established the new technique while capturing the fleeting effects of sunlight on the waters of the Seine.
The work was considered so seditious that a cartoon showed a pregnant woman barred from entering the Impressionist exhibit, lest her exposure to such “filth” injure her unborn child. A newspaper solemnly recounted how a man, driven insane by the paintings, rushed out to bite innocent bystanders. The art critics were even crueler. One claimed Renoir’s “Nude in the Sun” made the model’s flesh look putrid. They called Monet