Notes taken
from Beth Gersh-Nesic, Ben Politt, and Dr.’s Beth Harris and Steven Zucker of
Khan Academy.
What was
it about? What were the goals?
A simple
way to think of the Realists is to see it as another step towards Modernism.
Realists, mostly French painters who worked at the same time as
Pre-Raphaelites, still used academic training, styles and techniques, while shifting
interests away from the classics, and toward modern life and society. This was
a time of rapid transformation as the industrial revolution changed technology,
cities, and previous ways of life. Realist artists wanted to examine and
critique these changes in their art. Gustave Courbet, the de-facto leader of
this group, wanted to make “history paintings” about real life––what was
happening now. He felt, if he couldn’t see it, he shouldn’t paint it.
A word
about modernism:
“In the Stone Age, artists expressed
themselves with crude pictures on the walls of their caves. Then there was a
period of transition that lasted roughly 10,000 years. Then came Modern Art.
Now we can express ourselves again. If you want to know the details, you can go
to art school and spend thousands of dollars, but this is basically what
they'll teach you. I've boiled it down.” – Brad Holland
A bit of
historical context
So, what
changed during the industrial revolution? Basically, everything. This was one
of the first times in history when population and wealth grew consistently,
year to year, at unprecedented levels. One of the earliest and largest
businesses to industrialize was textile manufacturing. Gas was used for heating
homes and for street lights, starting around 1812 in London, and lasting until
around 1890 when electric lights began to replace them. Lights at night allowed
factories to run longer and created a new nightlife in cities. Modern
sanitation made cities cleaner. New railways, roads, and canals made travelling
faster, safer, and cheaper. People began taking weekend trips out into the
country, just for fun.
Paris, a centre of artistic development, had transformed as well, with
ambitious new projects that tore down old buildings to create broad new
boulevards. The city reinvented itself in a modern style with multi-class
buildings, where the rich lived on the first floors, and the poor up at the
top. This allowed for more social mixing and mobility.
The
underlying philosophy of the period:
If you
can’t see it, you shouldn’t paint it. Don’t dwell on the distant past because
you weren’t there, so you can’t possibly know what really happened. Focus on
the present and what’s happening now. You’re living in important, exciting
times. You need to record it so others can understand what life was like when
your present becomes the past––and painting is the best way to do it, because
so many of the changes are visual. Also, don’t be fooled into only presenting
“important people”. Every life matters equally, so everyone is important, not
just the rich and famous. Use your art to draw attention to people who need it,
not simply those who want it. Art critic Baudelaire also recommended that
artists be a flâneur, or stroller, joining the city crowds, but quietly
observing, so he could better understand and paint them.
How was
it represented in the other arts – music, architecture, and literature?
Realism is
a major movement in literature, philosophy, the theatre, and cinema. Realist
writers include Balzac, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and Emile
Zola. English writers include George Eliot, Henry Fielding, and American
realists include Mark Twain, Jack London, Stephen Crane, and John Steinbeck.
What
made it great?
Far and
away, the clearest star of the Realists was Edouard Manet, for his ability to
get into the heads of his subjects and present complex, conflicting emotions
with longing and pain that you can only guess at, no matter how long you look.
Manet painted people who speak to you with their eyes. His revolutionary
subjects and style have led some critics to call him the first modern artist.
Beyond this, many realist painters learned and imitated the Romantics in
landscape, using the light of the sun to evoke feelings and add drama. Having
said that, some of the work these artists produced is a bit mediocre, just like
with any art movement.
Why was
it so short-lived?
Much of
what one might consider “realist” art of this movement is limited to 1845-1870.
It’s a short amount of time. I would say the biggest factors in this were the
small number of artists who fit the criteria, few students of note to continue
the style and aesthetic onto a second generation, and a rising tide of new,
fashionable styles that swept away interest for a time. Of course, there are
many artists today who create highly realistic art that could be considered
“realist” in treatment of subject. But, they don’t get much recognition, and
it’s hard to draw a connection from the contemporary art world to a tradition
that died over 100 years ago.
Was it
really more realistic than other periods?
Yes and no,
so it’s not the best name for the movement. The two main facets of realism were
in the brushwork itself and the realist, objective construction of
compositions, showing things as they would look in real life, with no attempt
at idealization. If you look back you can find precursors to realism, for
example many golden-age Dutch masters, as well as the anti-Rococo painter
Chardin, who seems to have been a major influence on Millet and others. If you
look back at the Pre-Raphaelites, their colours and subjects may have been
otherworldly, but their attention to detail, perspective, and proportions were
highly realistic. Waterhouse even subdued his colours to increase the realism
of his works. What’s more, as many so-called “realists” got older, their works
became less and less photorealistic as the influence and appreciation for
impressionism grew. Many “realist” paintings feel unfinished and rough, and not
what one might consider realistic.
Some
leading figures:
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875)
Honoré-Victorin Daumier (1808-1879)
Jean-François Millet
(1814-1875) (Barbizon School)
Gustave
Courbet (1819-1877)
Charles
Baudelaire (1821-1867) (poet & art critic)
Rosa
Bonheur (1822-1899)
Philip
Alexius de Laszlo (Hungarian, 1869-1937)
American
Realists (Ashcan School):
Robert Henri
(1865-1929)
George Benjamin
Luks (1866-1933)
William
Glackens (1870-1938)
John Sloan
(1871-1951)
Everitt
Shin (1876-1953)
George
Bellows (1882-1925)
Edward
Hopper (1882-1967)
Peredvizhniki (Russian Realists):
Ivan
Shishkin (1832-1898)
Vasily
Perov (1833-1882)
Ilja Repin
(1844-1930)
Vladimir Makovsky (1846-1920)
Some of
the most famous artworks of the time:
The
Stone Breakers,
by Gustave Courbet, 1848
In this
painting, two men break rocks to clear a path for a road. Nothing here is
idealized. One worker looks too old for the job, while the other is only a boy.
Their clothing is torn and ragged. The low-angle perspective shows only the men
working in the foreground, with just a touch of sky and landscape high off to
the right, making the men feel isolated and trapped. Their poses suggest
exhaustion and pain. There’s nothing heroic about them. The brushwork is rough
and uneven, like the stones themselves. Where most painters would focus on the
faces and hands of the figures, Courbet treats them the same as everything
else. They lack the monumentality of Ford Maddox Brown’s Work, but feel
more “real”.
A
Burial at Ornans,
by Gustave Courbet, 1849-50
This painting
shows a funeral of an ordinary man in Ornans––Courbet’s great uncle, although
he didn’t add the name in the title. Courbet painted it large-scale and listed
it as a history painting––something unheard of at the time. Most people would
have considered it a genre painting since it depicted everyday life, but
Courbet wanted to present this as an important part in history.
Other than the immense size, three other facts stand out that add to its
realism. First of all, the man in front in the middle is a common grave digger,
and Courbet paints him with a level of importance and dignity, signifying the
importance of labourers. Second, there’s no real focal point in this work. Your
eyes wander along like you would in real life. You see a variety of faces and
expressions, some mourning, but some simply distracted or pensive––people who
might not have known the deceased, or cared. There’s even a dog that seems to
have wandered its way into the foreground, oblivious to what’s going on, and
symbolizing nothing. Three groups of figures are treated equally here, the clergy
on the left, the town officials and leaders in the middle, and a group of women
on the right. There’s little interaction among them. Each figure seems alone in
his or her thoughts.
Finally, there are no angels above or mystical lights from heaven.
There’s nothing to suggest heaven actually exists. Courbet painted only what he
saw, nothing more.
Ploughing
in the Nivernais,
by Rosa Bonhuer, 1849
This work
may seem a bit boring until you learn some of the history surrounding it. In
1848, France went through yet another revolution, with yet another king being
deposed in favour of yet another Napoleon. Politically, France was not doing
well, but this painting seeks to show a different story. This simple picture of
a farmer ploughing a field with his cows shows the strength of the French
spirit along with its rich, fertile land. It calls for courage and calm in hard
times.
The
Gleaners, by Jean-François Millet, 1857
This
painting depicts three poor beggar women who are gleaning, or picking through
the field, looking for bits of corn to take home and cook for their families.
They carry what little they can find in their skirts, which are tied up to
serve as sacks for the grain. In the distant background, one can see the main
crop, with large piles of grain and many workers engaged in similar activity,
gathering it. But they have plenty of food while these three women have little.
While the scene is harsh, Millet’s treatment is kind and gentle. He paints the
women with soft round shapes, muted colours, all in similar pose to unify them.
They are treated here with respect and solemnity, as Millet addresses this
issue of poverty. At the same time, he hides their faces, emphasizing their
anonymity – ignored by everyone in society.
L’Angelus, by Jean-François Millet, 1857-59
This work
shows a farming couple stop their work as they hear the church bell ringing in
the distance, so they stop to say a prayer, the Angelus, in honour of the
annunciation of Mary. The work is sentimental, showing an example of moral
life. The couple works hard every day, even to sundown, but they stop to pray.
They know their place in the universe, and so on. The couple looks iconic and
monumental. They’re back-lit so you can’t really see their faces, making them
represent every man and woman who lives this simple, honest farming life.
Music
in the Tuileries Gardens, by Edouard Manet, 1862
This
painting shows a concert in a garden near the Louvre, which was held twice
weekly, and attracted the rich and wealthy of Napoleon III’s Second Empire.
Manet included several famous people here, the artists Bazille and
Fantin-Latour, the writer Champfleury, and the composer Offenbach. Manet also
included himself as a flâneur, standing on the far left, in the
grey slacks. We, the viewers, are where the musicians should be, which is why
so many of the sitters are gazing at us.
The work was mocked when shown, partly for Manet’s loose brushwork, that
looked unfinished. Manet deliberately left some places unfinished to represent
the way our eyes focus on one thing and disregard others. But, mostly people
were shocked at the idea of such a large, monumental painting devoted to such
an unimportant scene of modern life. This work was shown the same year Whistler
exhibited the portrait of his mother, so the idea of devoting large works to
ordinary people and things was still new. And, while the Pre-Raphaelites and
Romantics had painted ordinary scenes before, it was rarely at this size, and they
were always filled with symbolism. But, there’s no symbolism present here. It’s
just a concert in the woods, nothing more.
The
Railway, Gare Saint-Lazare, by Edouard Manet, 1872-3
This
simple, straightforward painting is actually quite mysterious. We see a young
woman sitting by an iron railing, a young girl standing next to her, her back
turned to us as she watches a train go by. All we see is its steam. We have no
idea who the two people are, but the woman has paused in her reading, and looks
up at us, with a mix of curiosity and possible annoyance. Critics have debated
what the point was to this picture, which shows Manet’s own studio off in the
background to the left. Are the two figures trapped in a modern cage, or are
they happily enjoying the new modern life? What do you think?
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, by Edouard Manet, 1882
This
painting shows a barmaid at her counter, in a large, boisterous theatre. There
are acrobats above in the background, and couples flirting everywhere. You see
them reflected in a large mirror placed behind her. The mirror is tilted so
that you can see her back reflected to the right, and you even see your own
reflection, as a young Parisian man, speaking to her. Like with The Railway,
this work presents a mystery as we don’t know what the young woman is thinking.
Her eyes look sad and thoughtful. She looks hesitant, knowing that her job will
attract many men looking to flirt with her. While the counter top pushes her
farther from us, we see in the reflection that we’re actually quite near her.
This painting illustrates the kind of tension that people felt when in these
situations – does the man just want a drink or something more? Will he make
promises and is he telling the truth? She looks like she’s been hurt before and
nervous about starting again.
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