Edgar Degas had said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see,” this sentiment is critical to understanding Impressionism as an art movement and later as a literary one. Literary Impressionist authors adopted the techniques of the artists. Both artist and author use a layering to construct impressions of their subjects. Berthe Morisot’s painting, Woman at Her Toilette, in which the painting of her subject appears to be wearing jewelry, but closer examination of the work, reveals that she used the layering of the paint to give the painting texture which creates this impression. Like Morisot, Muriel Sparks also uses the layering of her words to create an impression of her subject, Miss Jean Brodie, in her novella, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. This layering contributes depth and complexity that is prevalent in the impressionistic style of art and literature. Jesse Metz, in the introduction of his book, Literary Impressionism and Modernist Aesthetics, speculates that if literature is considered an impression then it “makes surfaces show depths, make[s] fragments suggest wholes,” which also can be seen within the art style (1). Whereas the artist uses paint and brush to create an impressionistic painting, author Muriel Sparks uses the layering character perception to create the subject of her text. Due to the subjective nature of the impressionistic art and literary style, both mediums possess an ambiguous quality. According to Bernard Dunstan, in Painting Methods of the Impressionists, impressionism “has come to have overtones and associations which can obscure its true meaning,” (11). This is also true for impressionistic literature. However, Metz argues that “ambiguity surrounds the process through which the impre... ... middle of paper ... ... Cited Dunstan, Bernard. Painting Methods of the Impressionists. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1976. 11-13. Print. Gibbs, Beverly Jean. "Impressionism as a Literary Movement." The Modern Language Journal 36.4 (1952): 175-83. JSTOR. Web. 14 Jan. 2014. "Impressionism - Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, Degas, Guillaumin and Berthe Morisot." Impressionism. Atlantis International, 2006. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. Matz, Jesse. "Proust's Deathless Analogy." Introduction. Literary Impressionism and Modernist Aesthetics. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2001. 1-11. Print. Morisot, Berthe. A Woman at Her Toilette. 1875-1880. Oil on Canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago, Illnois. Renoir, Pierre Auguste. Young Woman Sewing. 1879. Oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago, Illnois. Spark, Muriel. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. New York: Perennial Classics, 1999. Print.
Besides bright or dim colors, and fine or rough brush strokes, artists use centralized composition to convey their interpretations in "The Acrobat's Family with a Monkey," "Amercian Gothic," "The Water-Seller," and "The Third of May,1808.”
Third Impressionist exhibition in Paris, held in 1877. Currently displayed in the Art Institute of
Ermel, Debra. "Elgin Artist with a Dream." Illinois History. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.
Walcutt, Charles Child. "Sherwood Anderson: Impressionism and the Buried Life." The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966. 158-170.
Impressionist paintings can be considered documents of Paris capital of modernity to a great extent. This can be seen in their subjects, style of painting, and juxtaposition of the transitive and the eternal.
"impressionism." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Credo Reference. Web. 18 February 2011.
Rewald, John. Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1978.
In this essay, I shall try to examine how great a role colour played in the evolution of Impressionism. Impressionism in itself can be seen as a linkage in a long chain of procedures, which led the art to the point it is today. In order to do so, colour in Impressionism needs to be placed within an art-historical context for us to see more clearly the role it has played in the evolution of modern painting. In the late eighteenth century, for example, ancient Greek and Roman examples provided the classical sources in art. At the same time, there was a revolt against the formalism of Neo-Classicism. The accepted style was characterised by appeal to reason and intellect, with a demand for a well-disciplined order and restraint in the work. The decisive Romantic movement emphasized the individual’s right in self-expression, in which imagination and emotion were given free reign and stressed colour rather than line; colour can be seen as the expression for emotion, whereas line is the expression of rationality. Their style was painterly rather than linear; colour offered a freedom that line denied. Among the Romanticists who had a strong influence on Impressionism were Joseph Mallord William Turner and Eugéne Delacroix. In Turner’s works, colour took precedence over the realistic portrayal of form; Delacroix led the way for the Impressionists to use unmixed hues. The transition between Romanticism and Impressionism was provided by a small group of artists who lived and worked at the village of Barbizon. Their naturalistic style was based entirely on their observation and painting of nature in the open air. In their natural landscape subjects, they paid careful attention to the colourful expression of light and atmosphere. For them, colour was as important as composition, and this visual approach, with its appeal to emotion, gradually displaced the more studied and forma, with its appeal to reason.
...tal aspects to understand who the female subject is. Miller doesn’t used repetition; in fact, he doesn't use geometric or organic shapes at all. The lack of the use of shapes and repetition mimics the way a woman would put on makeup. Typically, makeup isn’t put on in perfect shapes, much less organically shaped patterns. The impressionist style reflects the message of this painting more accurately than a more classical style, like Cenni’s, could.
In this essay, I will contrast and compare the two art movements, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism. I will be concentrating on the works of the two leading artists of these styles Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh.
Barnett, Peter. “The French Revolution in Art”. ArtId, January 7th 2009. Web. 5th May 2013.
Collischan, J. (2010). Made in the U S A: Modern/Contemporary Art in America. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse
Holt, Elizabeth G. From the Classicist to the Impressionists: Art and Architecture in the 19th Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966.
During the modernist movement artists and writers alike stepped away from traditional values, and radically changed the rules of perception in art. Before the modernist period traditional artistic values focused on realism, and art closely resembled life as it was. Boredom set in, and many artists began to manipulate the dimensions of reality. Reality was no longer viewed as perfect, but as series of fleeting impressions. Impressionism took the place of realism, and the ideas of individual perception took hold. Writers and artists started to contemplate what perception really was. The basic lines of realism in art dissolved, boundaries were crossed, and artists began to consider not only the idea of perception, but the experience of it as well. Walter Sickert is an example of an impressionist painter, who not only based many of his paintings on photographs, but manipulated light and colour to better represent the emotion of a scene, a stolen moment of the everyday lives the photograph depicted. His art was monumental in the modernist period, and like many other impressionist painters, he reshaped the idea of perception. On the literary side, lines of realism and tradition were also beginning to blur. Stream of consciousness writing was introduced, and became the written equivalent of impressionist art. The literary works of Henry James is an excellent illustration of how writers were able to create the impression of life in writing. Hand in hand the impressionist painters, and the stream of consciousness writers remodelled our view of perception .
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus defines beauty and the artist's comprehension of his/her own art. Stephen uses his esthetic theory with theories borrowed from St. Thomas Aquinas and Plato. The discourse can be broken down into three main sections: 1) A definitions of beauty and art. 2) The apprehension and qualifications of beauty. 3) The artist's view of his/her own work. I will explain how the first two sections of his esthetic theory relate to Stephen. Furthermore, I will argue that in the last section, Joyce is speaking of Stephen Dedalus and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as his art.