Before we arrived at our current contemporary art we were preceded by a long history of artistic movements. Due to art's cyclical cycle of evolution, where newness breeds criticism that breed newness, looking back at what's come before the Contemporary informs our knowledge of Contemporary art. With that established I would like to turn your attention to the turbulent evolution of modernism. Before we reach modernism however, let us first take a whistle-stop tour of how we got there.
So, it is late 18th Century Europe, we've experienced the Renaissance whose classicism and pursuit of understanding of man led to the Baroque and Rococo Periods. We've seen how Baroque and Rococo broke from the Renaissance's classical figuration and became more expressive through form and light. Oh, by the way the Enlightenment has also happened. Man has become new, equal, and free, Yippee! For some however, man is now too free and too similar. This places us at the peak of Romanticism.
The Romantic movement, appearing notably in Germany and England, wasn't a huge fan of how the enlightened French were homogenising European culture. So, they took matters into their own hands rejecting enlightened reason, reinstating traditions, sharing stories from local folk and returning from cities to the countryside. You're probably more familiar with Romanticism than you think. If you have visited Tate Britain, you have probably found yourself stood in a large burgundy hallway with lots of nice paintings of European landscapes and ships at sea. These are the work of acclaimed English landscape painter JMW Turner (namesake of the Turner prize, yeah that guy) who was a prominent figure in Romanticism. Just as Wordsworth was the champion of English, literary, Romanticism, Turner pioneered English, visual, Romanticism. He became popular for his abstract depictions of light which used distinct colour pallets to create contrast and invoke emotion. When we look at Turner, specifically his paper experiments, we see the visual similarities in his use of colour and loose brushwork to modern expressionism of the late 1900s. Even Mark Rothko, the Latvian American abstract expressionist, famously remarked on the similarities between his own work and Turner's! With all this in mind, it is no surprise that Tate calls Turner 'the father of modern art.'
Left: Joseph Mallord William Turner, Vignette Study; Sea and Sun c.1826–36, watercolour on paper. Image courtesy of https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain/display/jmw-turner/experiments-on-paper-vignettes
Right: Joseph Mallord William Turner, Study for Unidentified Vignettes: Lobsters on the Beach c.1835, watercolour on paper. Image courtesy of https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain/display/jmw-turner/experiments-on-paper-vignettes
From Romanticism then, the 19th Century saw the clash of Realism and Naturalism. Realism rejected the idyllic, aesthetic, haze of Romanticism and saw artists championing people, social-reality, and observable fact. The most famous of all realists was Gustave Courbet. In fact, the term 'most famous' serves him an injustice. Courbet pioneered French Realism, causing scandal at the 1850/51 Paris Salon (this was the fancy name given to the official exhibitions of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) when he presented a series of large-scale paintings set in his eastern-French hometown of Ornans. The series included two of Courbet's most renowned works The Stonebreakers and A Burial at Ornans. The Stonebreakers (1849) represented two peasant workers of both old age and youth working the land. A Burial at Ornans (1849-50) depicted an ordinary burial featuring clergymen and mourners with a depiction of the crucifixion placed atop a processional pole. The large scale and high detail used in these works was so controversial because they were usually reserved for history painting (paintings representing grand historical events, biblical stories, or myth.) The representation and elevation of the everyday man in ,what we'd now call unedited, reality that highlighted their work and existence over Christ and history completely subverted historical conventions. This led to Courbet being rejected from the Salon on multiple occasions.
Above: Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of https://www.gustave-courbet.com/the-stonebreakers.jsp
Above: Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans, 1849-50, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of https://www.gustave-courbet.com/a-burial-at-ornans.jsp
It is worth noting that Courbet was born to a farming family; heavily associated with left-wing politics; a fierce anti-monarchist and often expressed sympathy to the ideals of the French revolution. This influenced many of Courbet's paintings and underpinned much of Realism as a wider movement, as although Courbet was not a Marxist, this focus on the everyday man was in coincidence with Marxism.
Naturalism, on the other hand, focused less on the people being represented but more that the environment in which man existed was being represented with eye-sight realism. Now the difference between Realism and Naturalism can get a little hazy so we should clarify a few things. first off, naturalism did not explicitly focus on the countryside and pretty rural landscapes. Scenes within the home or cities could be naturalist just as equally as a scene in a field. I should probably also clarify that when speaking of realism and reality in naturalism, we are discussing the pursuit of visual imagery becoming closer to what we see through our eyes. This means that naturalistic works are presenting the world without exterior additions and embellishments. This differs to Realism's pursuit of works that present the reality of lived experience, which could be aided by subtle exterior additions and embellishments.
It is often said that our most famous British Naturalist was John Constable whose work is closely associated with Turner's and often termed romantic. But how can something be described as Romantic and Naturalist ? Well, the evolution of Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism all occurred within the 19th century and as a result artists often overlapped these categories. For example, Courbet began painting as part of the Romantic movement and turned to Realism to reject the constraints of artistic academia. For any It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Fans this is your Pepe Silvia moment, for anyone who like me ,hasn't seen It's Always Sunny, this is your manic-man-stringing-things-together-on-a-board-moment a.k.it is all connected.
Above: image courtesy of https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-silvia
With that cleared up, John Constable's depiction of the British countryside rejected conventions of landscape that had carried over from the classical period. Born in rural Suffolk, Constable used this landscape as a basis for much of his work. His most famed work The Hay Wain (1821) illustrates a static millstream near Flatford Mill, Suffolk. Within the stream a horse drawn cart and two men can be seen contrasted by the imposing mill house and tree line. Following behind them on the stream’s bank is a white and brown dog. Hidden at the edge of the stream and mill house a woman appears to be washing an item. on the opposite stream bank, a man fishes near two ducks. What is most striking about this work is its photograph-like realism. Every human, animal, building and landscape’s shadow has been captured in immense detail. The sky has been reflected in the ripple of the stream. The clouds have depth and a weight that confirms they are hanging in the sky. All these subtleties are what makes the reality of this scene so undisputable. It is this indisputability that makes this work a notable example of Naturalism.
Above: John Constable, The Hay Wain, 1821, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/john-constable-the-hay-wain
To make things even more confusing towards the end of the 19th century works began to be both Naturalist and Realist with the lines between the two becoming increasing blurred. If you already know a thing or two about modernist movements then you’re probably starting to string together how some of these movements grew out of this amalgamation of Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism.
Alongside this artistic evolution we also saw the rise of the city . Cities became essential to modernity. This term 'modernity' is often thrown around without definition so for everyone's sake I am going to clear up that is generally used to signify the consistent, social, technological, and cultural evolution from the 19th Century onwards. Therefore, as cities became inseparable from modernity, they became increasingly essential to Modernist art. Cities became travelable destinations due to the invention of the railway and due to this more people from a broader geographical radius were connecting in these places. Cities then became central communications of society, and this is something our culture has maintained. With this in mind, it is no surprise then that it was in European cities Modernist movements developed.
This leads us to Impressionism, specifically Paris 1874 where the first Impressionist exhibition showed the works of the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers etc. The exhibition received a good deal of bad press, and it is this bad press that gave the movement its name, criticising the works for looking unfinished and sloppy. Impressionists sought to break the traditions and constraints of the Parisian Salon taking control of their own work and sales. They embraced painterly brushstrokes, vivid pallets and alternative methods of painting that highlighted materiality.
New perceptions of work and time revolutionised the Impressionist movement's subject matter. Coinciding with the Industrial revolution, the advent of the Railway and Marxism, time became re-organised. A switch from Agrarian time (time organised by the agricultural sector, solar cycles, and seasonality ) to standardised time (which enable railway schedules to be implemented) transformed modern life as for the first time it made leisure time accessible to all classes. This provided Impressionists with new subject matter to paint that defied the subject of their predecessors. Contrary to Realism's depictions of work, suddenly the reality that was being presented wasn't that of man's struggle but of man's leisure and invention.
This progression in society, culture and art is succinctly captured in the work of Claude Monet. Now, I am sure we're all familiar with Monet's work after all his Waterlilies have been reprinted on about every surface imaginable. However, I'd like to focus on some of his other works, specifically The Gare St-Lazare and The Parc Monceau. The Gare St-Lazare depicts a bustling railway station with two great steam trains pulling into station. The steam is captured in a series of wispy, blue, brush strokes and the people a mass off dark, vertical, lines separated by flashes of blue and umber. What is so remarkably different about this to any of the works produced in the era or Realism and Naturalism is its’ essence of speed. Everyone has had the experience of a train pulling into station and the manic 2 minutes in which everyone piles off whilst those on the platform try to pile on. The frantic, chaotic nature of this is perfectly resembled in Monet's work through the lack of individual detail. Where the people become a homogenous blob of blues, blacks, and umber, we can interpret this bustling experience. This mirrors how new, industrial life became increasingly quicker for man.
The Parc Monceau (1876-8) tells the other side of the story of modern life. Here we see a Parisian Park shrouded in green, a modest building in the back and along the path a congregation of people are depicted engaging in leisure activities. These people are going for walks, sat on park benches, having picnics: all the things that are now quite every day, dare I say to some boring. But to the people in these paintings leisure was a new luxury, something previously reserved for those who could afford not to work. This paired with the painterly qualities of Monet's work is, I think, part the reason his work has become so popular. It encapsulates the picturesque moments of everyday life that were at the time so new and now to us so nostalgic.
Above: Claude Monet, The Gare St-Lazare, 1877, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/claude-monet-the-gare-st-lazare
Above: Claude Monet, The Parc Monceau, 1876-8, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Claude_Monet_-_The_Parc_Monceau.jpg
Impressionism leads us to the end of the 19th century, and this is where the Modernism we know, and love begins to emerge. Modernism has many roots within Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism. I think with Impressionist works it is clear to see how their influence played out. Impressionism utilised Romanticism's desire for national individuality, with Realism's depiction of the everyday man and Naturalism's mission to depict what we are seeing (although not as faithfully as some naturalists would like) ,alongside all the politics associated with these movements, to create a trajectory that fostered artists as individuals. It is this focus on artistic individuality that paved Modernism's way and in turn defined the Contemporary artist.
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