by Jeanne Willette | Jan 14, 2011 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
Characteristics of Fauvism Although all of the future Fauves were in Paris by 1900, Fauvism, as style, emerged—or was created—at Collioure in the spring of 1905. In a series of paintings by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and André Derain (1880-1954), completed...
by Jeanne Willette | Jan 7, 2011 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
FAUVISM One could argue about which movement was the “first” movement of the Twentieth Century—Art Nouveau (1895–1905), which led ultimately to the Bauhaus design revolution and even, arguably, to Constructivism of the Russian Avant-Garde or Fauvism (1905–07),...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 31, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
EUROPEAN EXPRESSIONISM 1900-1910 What caused the aesthetic crisis in European art at the beginning of the Twentieth Century? Somewhere around the very first years of the century, around 1904 and 1905, artists became aware that an old century was ending and that a new...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 31, 2010 | Modern, Modern Art, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
When Art Became Code If Expressionism was a temperamental predilection, then Cubism became the basis for a new artistic language that would dominate the rest of the century. But during the Great War, a younger generation of artists rebelled against the artistic...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 24, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
ART NOUVEAU Origins of Art Nouveau One could argue as to which was the last movement of the Nineteenth-century or the first movement of the Twentieth-century, but Art Nouveau fits into the end and the beginning, dating from 1895 to 1905. But these dates are...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 17, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
SYMBOLISM Art history usually places Symbolism, after or coinciding with Post-Impressionism. But Symbolism was much older and could be traced back as far as the painting of Gustave Moreau in the 1850s and the poetry of Charles Baudelaire of the 1860s. This movement...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 17, 2010 | Modern, Modern Art, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
The Avant-Garde Before the Great War The decades of the fin-de-siècle period in Europe were fruitful ones, years of innovation and experimentation in painting. “Ism” followed “ism:” Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, German Expressionism, ended only by...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 10, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
Post-Impressionist Artists: Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) Famous for wanting to reform Impressionism, Paul Cézanne approached nature in quite a fashion that distinguished him from the Impressionists and the other Post-impressionists. Like Paul Gauguin, he understood the...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 3, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
The Painters of Modern Life Although the Pre-Raphaelite artists initiated the artistic interest in contemporary urban life and the problems of modern people, the Parisian artists are given credit for learning how to express modernité in formal terms. The French...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 3, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
Post-Impressionist Artists: Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890) Writing to his devoted brother, Théo, Vincent van Gogh said, “I have a terrible lucidity sometimes when nature is so beautiful these days and then I do not feel myself anymore and the painting...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 26, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
Post-Impressionist Artists: Georges Seurat (1859 – 1891) Georges Seurat began as an “Impressionist,” or, at least he appeared in one of their last shows, but his goal was to reform Impressionism. In comparison to the older artists’ more direct approach to art,...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 19, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
Advanced Guard before the Avant-Garde There is some historical disagreement over when and where the avant-garde movement in the visual arts began. But it is clear that that the notion that changes in art come from the margins not the center came into existence and...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 19, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
Post-Impressionist Artists: Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903) Paul Gauguin and other artists of the late 19th century wanted to invent a new art to replace the analytic form of Impressionism. Gauguin, a former Sunday painter and stock broker, had been a student...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 12, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
Post-Impressionism “Post Impressionism” was a term coined after the historical fact by the English art critic, Roger Fry, in 1910 on the occasion of an exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in London entitled “Manet and the...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 5, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
THE SUBJECT MATTER OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS Redefining Landscape Painting The term “landscape” comes from the Dutch term “landskip,” and today when one thinks of landscape painting, an Impressionist work immediately comes to mind: soft and lovely colors, gently brushed...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 5, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
WHISTLER AND ART FOR ART’S SAKE Part Three Whistler was unusual among artists of his time in that he answered back to critics and took pains to establish his own discourse on his own art. His unique way of painting, without the meticulous detail of the...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 29, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
IMPRESSIONISM AND THE QUESTION OF CAPITALISM “Great art,” Honoré Balzac wrote, “is impossible without large fortunes, without secure and private means.” Emile Zola also bowed to the power of money, saying, “…money has emancipated the writer; money as created modern...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 22, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
WHISTLER AND THE PEACOCK ROOM Part Two The term “artistic freedom” may seem like a given but for nearly a century after Kant established the principal, “freedom” was rarely practiced. But Whistler took the concept seriously and set out to test...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 22, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
THE SUBJECT MATTER OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS Gender and Class in Impressionism The Impressionists were unusual in that they were a group of artists. For artists to function as a group or as a whole, outside the traditional art establishment. was a new phenomenon. ...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 15, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
HOW THE IMPRESSIONISTS PAINTED The concept of the “impression” is central to Impressionist practice. As early as 1742, the British philosopher, David Hume, distinguished between “impressions” and “ideas:” “..lively...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 8, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
Whistler, Manet and The White Girl One of the most overlooked avant-garde pioneers was the American in Paris (and London), the expatriate, James Whistler. Whistler was one of the first international artists, who showed in London and Parisian Salons. Although...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 8, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art
THE BARBIZON SCHOOL AND LANDSCAPE PAINTING On the edge of the Forest of Fountainebleau—once the hunting domain of French kings—lay the tiny village of Barbizon. As Paris grew more and more urbanized, its inhabitants yearned for a taste of the country and...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 1, 2010 | Modern, Modern Art, Modern Culture
MANET AND IMPRESSIONISM Édouard Manet’s images of Paris were unprecedented in their unsparing modernity, the sights and scenes that delighted the boulevardier. The painter himself, an elegant dandy, lounged congenially at the Café Tortoni, the Café Guerbois,...
by Jeanne Willette | Sep 24, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
MANET AND MODERN LIFE Édouard Manet was not the artist that the Second Empire would have selected to be its chronicler, but, in the end, it was Manet’s impressions of France’s last monarchy that would make an indelible mark on the public memory. Napoléon III followed...
by Jeanne Willette | Sep 24, 2010 | Modern, Modern Art, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
ÉDOUARD MANET Part Two The painter of Parisian modernité, Édouard Manet, abandoned his early strategy of commenting on past masterpieces but continued his quest to update and modernize traditional genres in Salon painting. A transitional painter, Manet pointed to way...
