Impressionism first appeared in France towards the end of the 19th century. Before the advent of this trend, still lifes, portraits and even landscapes were mostly painted by artists in studios. Impressionist paintings, on the other hand, were often created in the open air, and real fleeting scenes from modern life became their subjects. And although impressionism was initially criticized, it soon gathered a large following and laid the foundation for similar movements in music and literature.
Famous French Impressionist painters
It is not surprising that impressionism in painting has become one of the most famous areas of fine art: artists who worked in this style left behind canvases of amazing beauty, light as a breath of fresh air, full of light and colors. Many of these beautiful works were written by the following masters of impressionism, which every self-respecting connoisseur of world painting knows.
Edouard Manet
Despite the fact that the entire work of Edouard Manet cannot be placed only within the framework of impressionism, the painter largely influenced the emergence of this trend, and other French artists working in this style considered him the founder of impressionism and their ideological inspirer. Other well-known French impressionists were good friends of the master: Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, as well as an impressionist artist with a similar surname, which baffles beginners in the world of painting, Claude Monet.
After meeting these artists, impressionistic changes took place in Manet's work: he began to prefer working outdoors, light, bright colors, an abundance of light and fractional composition began to predominate in the paintings. Although he still does not refuse dark colors, and he prefers painting in the domestic genre to landscapes - this can be traced in the painter's works "Bar at the Folies Bergère", "Music at the Tuileries", "Breakfast on the Grass", "Papa's Lathuille", "Argenteuil" and others.
Claude Monet
The name of this French artist, perhaps, at least once in his life everyone heard. Claude Monet was one of the founders of Impressionism, and it was his painting Impression: Rising Sun that gave the movement its name.
In the 60s of the 19th century, the impressionist artist was one of the first to take a great interest in painting in the open air, and much later he created a new experimental approach to work. It consisted in observing and depicting the same object at different times of the day: this is how a whole series of canvases was created overlooking the facade of the Rouen Cathedral, opposite which the artist even settled in order not to lose sight of the building.
As you study Impressionism in painting, don't miss Monet's Field of Poppies at Argenteuil, Walk to the Cliff at Pourville, Women in the Garden, Lady with Umbrella, Boulevard des Capucines, and the Water lilies."
Pierre Auguste Renoir
This impressionist artist had a unique vision of beauty, which made Renoir one of the most famous representatives of this movement. First of all, he is famous for his paintings of the noisy Parisian life and leisure of the late 19th century. Renoir perfectly knew how to work with color and chiaroscuro, in particular, his exceptional ability to paint nudes, with a unique transmission of tones and textures, is noted.
Already from the 80s, the Impressionist artist began to lean more towards the classical style of painting and became interested in Renaissance painting, which forced him to include sharper lines and a clear composition in his mature works. It was during this period that Pierre-Auguste Renoir created some of the most imperishable works of his era.
Pay special attention to such paintings by Renoir as "Breakfast of the Rowers", "Ball at the Moulin de la Galette", "Dance in the Village", "Umbrellas", "Dance at Bougival", "Girls at the Piano".
Edgar Degas
In the history of art, Edgar Degas remained as an impressionist artist, although he himself denied this label, preferring to call himself rather an independent artist. Indeed, he had a certain interest in realism, which distinguished the artist from other impressionists, but at the same time he used many impressionist techniques in his work, in particular, he “played” with light in the same way and was fond of depicting scenes from urban life.
Degas was always attracted by the human figure, he often depicted singers, dancers, laundresses, trying to depict the human body in various positions, for example, on the canvases “Dance Class”, “Rehearsal”, “Concert at the Ambassador Cafe”, “Opera Orchestra”, “ Dancers in blue.
Camille Pissarro
Pissarro was the only artist who participated in all eight Impressionist exhibitions from 1874 to 1886. While Impressionist paintings are known for their urban and countryside scenes, Pissarro's paintings show the viewer the daily life of French peasants, depicting rural nature in various conditions and under different lighting conditions.
Getting acquainted with the paintings that this impressionist artist painted, first of all it is worth seeing the works “Boulevard Montmartre at night”, “Harvest in Eragny”, “Reapers rest”, “Garden in Pontoise” and “Entrance to the village of Voisin”.
The word "Impressionism" is derived from the French "impression" - impression. This is a direction of painting that originated in France in the 1860s. and largely determined the development of art in the 19th century. The central figures of this trend were Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley, and the contribution of each of them to its development is unique. The Impressionists opposed the conventions of classicism, romanticism and academism, asserted the beauty of everyday reality, simple, democratic motives, achieved a lively authenticity of the image, tried to capture the “impression” of what the eye sees at a particular moment, without focusing on drawing specific details.
In the spring of 1874, a group of young painters, including Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas, Cezanne and Berthe Morisot, neglected the official Salon and staged their own exhibition. Such an act was in itself revolutionary and broke with age-old foundations, while the paintings of these artists at first glance seemed even more hostile to tradition. The reaction to this innovation from visitors and critics was far from friendly. They accused the artists of writing simply to attract the attention of the public, and not in the way that recognized masters do. The most condescending considered their work as a mockery, as an attempt to play a trick on honest people. It took years of fierce struggle before these, later recognized, classics of painting were able to convince the public not only of their sincerity, but also of their talent.
Trying to express their immediate impressions of things as accurately as possible, the Impressionists created a new method of painting. Its essence was to convey the external impression of light, shadow, reflexes on the surface of objects with separate strokes of pure colors, which visually dissolved the form in the surrounding light-air environment. In their favorite genres (landscape, portrait, multi-figure composition), they tried to convey their fleeting impressions of the world around them (scenes on the street, in cafes, sketches of Sunday walks, etc.). The Impressionists portrayed a life full of natural poetry, where a person is in unity with the environment, eternally changeable, striking in richness and sparkling with pure, bright colors.
After the first exhibition in Paris, these artists began to be called impressionists, from the French word "impression" - "impression". This word was suitable for their works, because in them the artists conveyed their direct impression of what they saw. Artists approached the image of the world in a new way. The main theme for them was quivering light, air, in which people and objects are, as it were, immersed. In their paintings, one could feel the wind, the damp, sun-warmed earth. They sought to show the amazing richness of color in nature. Impressionism was the last major artistic movement in 19th century France.
This is not to say that the path of the Impressionist artists was easy. At first they were not recognized, their painting was too bold and unusual, they were laughed at. Nobody wanted to buy their paintings. But they stubbornly went their own way. Neither poverty nor hunger could force them to abandon their beliefs. Many years passed, many of the Impressionist painters were no longer alive when their art was finally recognized.
All these very different artists were united by a common struggle against conservatism and academicism in art. The Impressionists held eight exhibitions, the last in 1886. This actually ends the history of impressionism as a trend in painting, after which each of the artists went his own way.
One of the paintings presented at the first exhibition of the "independents", as the artists preferred to call themselves, belonged to Claude Monet and was called "Impression. Sunrise". In a newspaper review of the exhibition that appeared the next day, critic L. Leroy scoffed in every possible way at the lack of “formality” in the paintings, ironically inclining the word “impression” in every way, as if replacing true art in the works of young artists. Against expectations, the new word, uttered in mockery, took root and served as the name of the whole movement, since it perfectly expressed the common thing that united all participants in the exhibition - the subjective experience of color, light, space. Trying to express their immediate impressions of things as accurately as possible, artists freed themselves from traditional rules and created a new method of painting.
The Impressionists put forward their own principles of perception and display of the surrounding world. They erased the line between the main objects worthy of high art and secondary objects, established a direct and feedback relationship between them. The impressionistic method thus became the maximum expression of the very principle of painting. The pictorial approach to the image just involves the identification of the relationship of the subject with the world around it. The new method forced the viewer to decipher not so much the vicissitudes of the plot as the secrets of the painting itself.
The essence of the impressionistic vision of nature and its image lies in the weakening of the active, analytical perception of three-dimensional space and reducing it to the original two-dimensionality of the canvas, determined by a planar visual setting, in the words of A. Hildebrand, “distant looking at nature”, which leads to the distraction of the depicted object from its material qualities, merging with the environment, almost completely turning it into an “appearance”, an appearance that dissolves in light and air. It is no coincidence that P. Cezanne later called the leader of the French Impressionists Claude Monet "only an eye." This "detachment" of visual perception also led to the suppression of the "color of memory", i.e., the connection of color with the usual subject representations and associations, according to which the sky is always blue and the grass is green. The Impressionists could, depending on their vision, paint the sky green and the grass blue. "Objective plausibility" was sacrificed to the laws of visual perception. For example, J. Seurat enthusiastically told everyone how he discovered that the orange coastal sand in the shade is bright blue. Thus, the principle of contrasting perception of complementary colors was put at the basis of the pictorial method.
For an impressionist artist, for the most part, it is not what he depicts that matters, but the “how” is important. The object becomes only an occasion for solving purely pictorial, “visual” tasks. Therefore, impressionism originally had another, later forgotten name - “chromantism” (from the Greek Chroma - color). The Impressionists updated coloring, they abandoned dark, earthy colors and applied pure, spectral colors to the canvas, almost without mixing them first on the palette. The naturalism of impressionism consisted in the fact that the most uninteresting, ordinary, prosaic turned into beautiful, as soon as the artist saw the subtle nuances of gray and blue there.
The brevity, etude nature of the creative method of impressionism is characteristic. After all, only a short study made it possible to accurately record individual states of nature. The Impressionists were the first to break with the traditional principles of spatial painting dating back to the Renaissance and Baroque. They used asymmetrical compositions to better highlight the characters and objects they were interested in. But the paradox was that, having abandoned the naturalism of academic art, destroying its canons and declaring the aesthetic value of fixing everything fleeting, random, the Impressionists remained captive to naturalistic thinking and, moreover, in many ways it was a step backwards. One can recall the words of O. Spengler that "Rembrandt's landscape lies somewhere in the endless spaces of the world, while Claude Monet's landscape is close to the railway station"
Impressionism is one of the most famous movements in French painting, if not the most famous. And it originated in the late 60s and early 70s of the XIX century and largely influenced the further development of the art of that time.
Impressionism in painting
The name itself impressionism” was coined by a French art critic named Louis Leroy after visiting the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, where he criticized Claude Monet’s painting “Impression: Rising Sun” (“impression” in French sounds like “impression”).
Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Frederic Bazille are the main representatives of impressionism.
Impressionism in painting is characterized by quick, spontaneous and free strokes. The guiding principle was a realistic image of the light-air environment.
The Impressionists sought to capture fleeting moments on canvas. If at this very moment the object appears in an unnatural color, due to a certain angle of incidence of light or its reflection, then the artist depicts it that way: for example, if the sun paints the surface of a pond pink, then it will be written in pink.
Features of Impressionism
Speaking about the main features of impressionism, it is necessary to name the following:
- immediate and optically accurate image of a fleeting moment;
- doing all the work outdoors - no more preparatory sketches and finishing work in the studio;
- the use of pure color on the canvas, without pre-mixing on the palette;
- the use of splashes of bright paint, strokes of various sizes and degrees of sweeping, which visually add up to one picture only when viewed from a distance.
Russian impressionism
The reference portrait in this style is considered one of the masterpieces of Russian painting - "Girl with Peaches" by Alexander Serov, for whom impressionism, however, became just a period of passion. Russian impressionism also includes works written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Konstantin Korovin, Abram Arkhipov, Philip Malyavin, Igor Grabar and other artists.
This affiliation is rather conditional, since Russian and classical French impressionism have their own specifics. Russian impressionism was closer to materiality, objectivity of works, gravitated towards artistic meaning, while French impressionism, as mentioned above, simply sought to depict moments of life, without unnecessary philosophy.
In fact, Russian impressionism adopted from the French only the external side of the style, the methods of its painting, but did not assimilate the very pictorial thinking embedded in impressionism.
Modern impressionism continues the traditions of classical French impressionism. In modern painting of the XXI century, many artists are working in this direction, for example, Laurent Parcelier, Karen Tarleton, Diana Leonard and others.
Masterpieces in the style of impressionism
"Terrace at Sainte-Adresse" (1867), Claude Monet
This painting can be called Monet's first masterpiece. It is still the most popular early impressionist painting. Here, too, there is a favorite theme of the artist - flowers and the sea. The canvas depicts several people relaxing on a terrace on a sunny day. On the chairs, with their backs to the audience, the relatives of Monet himself are depicted.
The whole picture is flooded with bright sunlight. Clear boundaries between earth, sky and sea are separated, ordering the composition vertically with the help of two flagpoles, however, the composition does not have a clear center. The colors of the flags are combined with the surrounding nature, emphasizing the diversity and richness of colors.
"Ball at the Moulin de la Galette" (1876), Pierre-Auguste Renoir
This painting depicts a typical Sunday afternoon in 19th-century Paris at the Moulin de la Galette, a café with an open-air dance floor, named after the windmill nearby, emblematic of Montmartre. Renoir's house was located next to this cafe; he frequented Sunday afternoon dances and enjoyed watching happy couples.
Renoir shows real talent and combines the art of group portrait, still life and landscape painting in one painting. The use of light in this composition and the smoothness of the strokes best represent the style to a wide audience. impressionism. This painting has become one of the most expensive paintings ever sold at auction.
Boulevard Montmartre at night (1897), Camille Pissarro
While Pissarro is famous for his paintings of rural life, he also painted a large number of beautiful 19th-century urban scenes in Paris. He liked to paint the city because of the play of light during the day and in the evening, because of the roads illuminated by both sunlight and street lamps.
In 1897, he rented a room on the boulevard Montmartre and painted him at different times of the day, and this work was the only work in the series captured after night fell. The canvas is filled with deep blue and bright yellow spots of city lights. In all the pictures of the "tabloid" cycle, the main core of the composition is the road that goes into the distance.
Now the painting is in the National Gallery in London, but during the life of Pissarro, she never exhibited anywhere.
You can watch a video about the history and conditions of creativity of the main representatives of impressionism here:
Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. D.N. Ushakov
impressionism
impressionism, pl. no, m. (fr. impressionisme) (art.). A direction in art that aims to convey, reproduce direct, subjective impressions of reality.
Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova.
impressionism
A, m. Art direction of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. striving for a direct reproduction of the experiences, moods and impressions of the artist.
adj. impressionistic, -th, -th and impressionistic, -th, -th.
New explanatory and derivational dictionary of the Russian language, T. F. Efremova.
impressionism
m. A direction in the art of the last third of the 19th century - the beginning of the 20th century, based on the desire to reflect the real world in its mobility, variability and capture the artist's, composer's own feelings, etc.
Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1998
impressionism
IMPRESSIONISM (from the French impression - impression) a direction in the art of the last third of the 19th - early. 20 centuries, whose representatives strove to capture the real world in its mobility and variability in the most natural and unbiased way, to convey their fleeting impressions. Impressionism originated in the 1860s, in French painting: E. Manet, O. Renoir, E. Degas introduced freshness and immediacy of perception of life into art, the image of instantaneous, as it were, random movements and situations, apparent imbalance, fragmentary composition, unexpected points of view, angles, cuts of figures. In the 1870-80s. impressionism was formed in the French landscape: C. Monet, C. Pissarro, A. Sisley developed a consistent plein air system; working in the open air, they created a feeling of sparkling sunlight, the richness of the colors of nature, the dissolution of three-dimensional forms in the vibration of light and air. The decomposition of complex tones into pure colors (superimposed on the canvas in separate strokes and designed for their optical mixing in the eye of the viewer), colored shadows and reflections gave rise to an unparalleled light, quivering painting. In addition to painters (American - J. Whistler, German - M. Lieberman, L. Corinth, Russian - K. A. Korovin, I. E. Grabar), sculptors perceived the interest of impressionism in instantaneous movement, fluid form (French - O. Rodin , Italian - M. Rosso, Russian - P. P. Trubetskoy). For musical impressionism con. 19 - beg. 20th century (in France - C. Debussy, partly M. Ravel, P. Duke, etc.), which developed under the influence of impressionism in painting, are characterized by the transmission of subtle moods, psychological nuances, an inclination towards landscape programming, an interest in timbre and harmonic colorfulness. The literature speaks about the features of the impressionistic style in relation to European literature of the last third of the 19th century, Russian poetry of the beginning. 20th century (K. Hamsun in Norway, I. F. Annensky in Russia, etc.).
Impressionism
(French impressionnisme, from impression ≈ impression), a direction in the art of the last third of the 19th ≈ early 20th centuries. I. took shape in French painting in the late 1860s and early 1870s. At the time of his maturity (the 1870s - the first half of the 1880s), I. was represented by a group of artists (C. Monet, O. Renoir, E. Degas, C. Pissarro, A. Sisley, B. Morisot and others .), united to fight for the renewal of art and overcoming the official salon academicism and organized 8 exhibitions from 1874 to 1886 for this purpose; E. Manet, who back in the 1860s. predetermined the orientation of I. and which also in the 1870s-80s. was associated with him in many respects, was not included in this group. Title "I." arose after the exhibition of 1874, which exhibited the painting by C. Monet “Impression. Rising Sun” (“Impression, Soleil levant”, 1872, now in the Musée Marmottan, Paris).
I. continues what the realistic art of the 1840s-60s began. liberation from the conventions of classicism, romanticism and academicism and affirms the beauty of everyday reality, simple, democratic motives, achieves a living authenticity of the image. I. makes authentic, modern life aesthetically significant in its naturalness, in all the richness and sparkle of its colors, capturing the visible world in its inherent constant variability, recreating the unity of man and his environment. Emphasizing, as it were, a transient moment of the continuous flow of life, as if accidentally caught by the eye, the Impressionists abandon the narration, the plot. In their landscapes, portraits, and multi-figure compositions, the artists strive to preserve the impartiality, strength, and freshness of the “first impression,” which allows them to capture the uniquely characteristic in what they see, without going into individual details. Depicting the world as an ever-changing optical phenomenon, I. does not seek to emphasize its constant, deep qualities. The knowledge of the world in visual arts is based mainly on sophisticated observation, the visual experience of the artist, who uses works and the laws of natural optical perception to achieve artistic persuasiveness. The process of this perception, its dynamics are reflected in the structure of the work, which, in turn, actively directs the viewer's perception of the picture. However, the emphasized empiricism of the method of visualization, which made it related to naturalism, sometimes led representatives of visual arts to self-sufficient visual-painting experiments, limiting the possibilities of artistic knowledge of the essential moments of reality. In general, the works of the Impressionists are distinguished by cheerfulness, enthusiasm for the sensual beauty of the world; and only in some works of Degas and Manet there are bitter, sarcastic notes.
The Impressionists for the first time create a multifaceted picture of the everyday life of a modern city, conveying the originality of its landscape and the appearance of the people inhabiting it, their way of life and, less often, work; The theme of specifically urban entertainment also appears in India. At the same time, in the art of I., the moment of social criticism is weakening. Striving for a truthful depiction of everyday nature close to man, the Impressionist landscape painters (especially Pissarro and Sisley) develop the traditions of the Barbizon school. Continuing the plein air (see Plein air) searches of J. Constable, the Barbizons, as well as C. Corot, E. Boudin and J. B. Jongkind, the Impressionists developed a complete plein air system. In their landscapes, the everyday motif is often transformed by the all-penetrating, moving sunlight, which brings a sense of festivity into the picture. Working on a painting directly in the open air made it possible to reproduce nature in all its real vivacity, to subtly analyze and instantly capture its transitional states, to capture the slightest color changes that appear under the influence of a vibrating and fluid light-air medium (organically uniting man and nature), which sometimes it becomes in I. an independent object of the image (mainly in the works of Monet). In order to preserve the freshness and variety of colors of nature in the picture, the Impressionists (with the exception of Degas) created a pictorial system that is distinguished by the decomposition of complex tones into pure colors and the interpenetration of separate strokes of pure color, as if mixing in the eye of the viewer, light and bright colors, richness of valery and reflexes, colored shadows. Volumetric forms, as it were, dissolve in the light-air shell that envelops them, dematerialize, acquire unsteadiness of outlines: the play of various strokes, pasty and liquid, gives the colorful layer a quivering, relief; this creates a peculiar impression of incompleteness, the formation of an image in front of a person contemplating the canvas. All this is connected with the artist's desire to preserve in the picture the effect of improvisation, which in the previous era was allowed only in sketches and which usually disappeared when they were processed into finished works .; Thus, in I. there is a rapprochement between the sketch and the picture, and often the merging of several stages of work into one continuous process. An impressionistic picture is a separate frame, a fragment of a moving world. This explains, on the one hand, the equivalence of all parts of the picture, simultaneously born under the brush of the artist and equally participating in the figurative construction of the work; on the other hand, apparent randomness and imbalance, asymmetry of composition, bold cuts of figures, unexpected points of view and complex angles that activate spatial construction; losing depth, space sometimes “turns out” onto a plane or goes to infinity. In some methods of constructing composition and space, the influence of Japanese engraving and, to some extent, photography is noticeable.
By the mid 1880s. I., having exhausted its possibilities as an integral system and a single direction, disintegrates, giving impulses for the subsequent evolution of art. I. introduced new themes into art, comprehending the aesthetic significance of many aspects of reality. The works of mature I. are distinguished by their bright and immediate vitality. At the same time, I. is also characterized by the identification of aesthetic intrinsic value and new expressive possibilities of color, the emphasized aestheticization of the method of execution, and the exposure of the formal structure of the work; It is precisely these features, which are only emerging in I., that are further developed in Neo-Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. In the 1880≈1910s. I. had a significant influence on many painters in other countries (M. Lieberman, L. Corinth in Germany; K. A. Korovin, V. A. Serov, I. E. Grabar, early M. V. Larionov in Russia, etc.). ), which manifested itself in the development of new aspects of reality, in mastering the effects of plein air, highlighting the palette, sketchy manner, mastering certain technical techniques. Certain principles of visual arts—the transmission of instantaneous movement and the fluidity of form—were reflected to varying degrees in the sculpture of the 1880s and 1910s. (E. Degas and O. Rodin in France, M. Rosso in Italy, P. P. Trubetskoy and A. S. Golubkina in Russia); at the same time, the increased picturesqueness of impressionistic sculpture sometimes came into conflict with the tangibility and corporality inherent in the very nature of the sculptural image. The traditions of I. are palpable in many realistic movements in the art of the 20th century. I. in the visual arts had a certain influence on the formation of some principles of I. and on the development of expressive means in literature, music and theater; however, in these forms of art, art did not become an integral artistic system of milestone significance.
In relation to literature, style is widely regarded as a stylistic phenomenon that arose in the last third of the 19th century. and captured writers of various beliefs and methods, and narrowly - as a trend with a certain method and a worldview that gravitated towards decadence, which developed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Signs of the “impressionistic style” are the absence of a clearly defined form and the desire to convey the subject in fragmentary, instantly fixing every impression strokes, which, however, revealed, when reviewing the whole, their hidden unity and connection. As a special style, I., with his principle of the value of the first impression, made it possible to narrate through such, as it were, seized at random, details that apparently violated the strict coherence of the narrative plan and the principle of selection of the essential, but with their “lateral” truth imparted to the story extraordinary brightness and freshness, and the artistic idea - unexpected branching and diversity. Remaining a stylistic phenomenon, I. did not mean, especially among great writers (for example, A. P. Chekhov, I. A. Bunin, etc.), breaking the artistic principles of realism, but affected the enrichment of these principles and the steadily increasing art of descriptions (for example, , Chekhov's description of a thunderstorm in the story "The Steppe"; features of I. in Chekhov's style were also noted by L. N. Tolstoy). By the beginning of the 20th century several stylistic varieties of I. arose on a common realistic basis. The brothers J. and E. Goncourt (“poets of nerves”, “connoisseurs of imperceptible sensations”) were the founders of “psychological I.”, the sophisticated technique of which can be observed in K. Hamsun’s novel “Hunger”, in the early T. Mann (in short stories) , S. Zweig, in the lyrics of I. F. Annensky. “Plein air”, quivering picturesqueness is felt by the same Goncourt brothers, by E. Zola in the style of descriptions of Paris (“Page of Love”), by the Danish writer E. P. Jacobsen (in the short story “Mogens”); picturesquely expresses lyrical situations by means of impressionistic technique (including syntax and rhythm) by the German poet D. von Lilienkron. The English neo-romantic writers R. L. Stevenson and J. Conrad developed the exotic colorful properties of I.; their manner was continued in later literature on "southern" themes, up to the stories of S. Maugham. In P. Verlaine's Romances Without Words, the thrill of the soul and picturesque flickering (“certain shades captivate us”) are accompanied by a musical mood, and his poem “Poetic Art” (1874, published 1882) sounds both like a manifesto of poetic I. and like foreshadowing the poetics of symbolism.
Later, Hamsun and some other writers of the early 20th century. I. to a lesser or greater extent is isolated from realistic principles and turns into a special vision and attitude (or method) - a vague, indefinite subjectivism, partially anticipating the literature of the "stream of consciousness" (the work of M. Proust). Such I., with his “philosophy of the moment,” questioned the semantic and moral foundations of life. The cult of "impression" locked man in himself; only that which is fleeting, elusive, inexpressible by anything but sensations became valuable and the only real. Fluid moods revolved predominantly around the theme of "love and death"; the artistic image was built on shaky understatements and vague hints that lifted the "veil" over the fatal play of unconscious elements in a person's life. Decadent motifs are characteristic of the Viennese school of I. (G. Bar; A. Schnitzler, especially his one-act plays The Green Parrot, 1899, The Puppets, 1906, etc.), in Poland - for J. Kasprowicz, K. Tetmayer . The impact of I. was experienced, for example, by O. Wilde, G. von Hofmannsthal (lyric poetry, including The Ballad of External Life; libretto dramas), in Russian literature - B. K. Zaitsev (psychological studies), K. D. Balmont (with his lyrics of "transiency"). By the middle of the 20th century I. as an independent method has exhausted itself.
The use of the term "I." Musical painting is in many respects conditional—musical painting does not constitute a direct analogy with painting and does not coincide chronologically with it (its heyday was in the 1990s and the first decade of the 20th century). The main thing in musical I. is the transmission of moods that acquire the meaning of symbols, subtle psychological nuances, and a tendency towards poetic landscape programming. He is also characterized by refined fantasy, poetization of antiquity, exoticism, interest in timbre and harmonic brilliance. With the main line of I. in painting, he has in common an enthusiastic attitude to life; moments of acute conflicts, social contradictions in it bypass. The classical expression of musical I. found in the work of C. Debussy; its features also appeared in the music of M. Ravel, P. Duke, F. Schmitt, J. J. Roger-Ducas, and other French composers.
Musical I. inherited many features of the art of late romanticism and national musical schools of the 19th century. (“The Mighty Handful”, F. Liszt, E. Grieg and others). At the same time, the Impressionists contrasted the clear relief of contours, the purely materiality and oversaturation of the musical palette of the late romantics with the art of restrained emotions and transparent, stingy texture, and a fluent changeability of images.
The work of impressionist composers in many ways enriched the expressive means of music, especially the sphere of harmony, which reached great beauty and refinement; the complication of chord complexes is combined in it with the simplification and archaization of modal thinking; the orchestration is dominated by pure colors, whimsical reflections, unsteady and elusive rhythms. The brilliance of harmonic and timbre means comes to the fore: the expressive meaning of each sound, chord is enhanced, previously unknown possibilities for expanding the modal sphere are revealed. A special freshness to the music of the Impressionists was given by their frequent appeal to song and dance genres, to the elements of the musical language of the peoples of the East, Spain, and early forms of Negro jazz.
At the beginning of the 20th century musical I. spread beyond the borders of France. It was originally developed by M. de Falla in Spain, A. Casella and O. Respighi in Italy. Original features are inherent in English musical I. with its "northern" landscape (F. Delius) or spicy exoticism (S. Scott). In Poland, the exotic line of musical I. was represented by K. Szymanowski (until 1920), who gravitated toward the ultra-refined images of antiquity and the Ancient East. Influence of I. aesthetics at the turn of the 20th century. some Russian composers also experienced it, in particular A. N. Scriabin, who was simultaneously influenced by symbolism; In the mainstream of the Russian I., whimsically combined with the influence of the school of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, I. F. Stravinsky began his journey, in subsequent years he led the anti-impressionist trend in Western European music.
O. V. Mamontova (I. in the fine arts), I. V. Nestiev (I. in music).
In the theater of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. the attention of directors and performers to conveying the atmosphere of the action, the mood of a particular scene, and revealing its subtext increased. At the same time, the authenticity and meaningfulness of life were conveyed with the help of deliberately cursory characteristics in combination with individual brightly expressive details that revealed the hero's shadowed experiences, his thoughts, and impulses of actions. Sudden changes in rhythms, the use of sounds, picturesque color spots were used by the director to create a certain emotional richness in the performance, through which the internal increase in drama, hidden behind the course of everyday life, was exposed. The expressive means of I. were used in the productions of A. Antoine (France), M. Reinhardt (Germany), V. E. Meyerhold (Russia), in the performances of the Moscow Art Theater (for example, in the productions of plays by A. P. Chekhov). Contemporaries noted the features of I. in the acting of G. Rezhan (France), E. Duse (Italy), V. F. Komissarzhevskaya, and other actors.
T. M. Motherland.
Lit .: Mauclair K., Impressionism. His history, his aesthetics, his masters, trans. from French, M.,; Meyer-Grefe Yu., Impressionists, trans. from German., M., 1913; Venturi L., From Manet to Lautrec, trans. from Italian., M., 1958; Rewald, J., A History of Impressionism, trans. from English, L.≈M., 1959; Impressionism, trans. from French, L., 1969; Chegodaev A. D., Impressionists, M., 1971; Bazin G., L "époque impressionniste, 2 ed., P., 1953; Leymarie J., L" impressionisme, v. 1≈2, Gen., 1959; Danckert W., Das Wesen des musikalischen Impressionismus, "Deutsche Vierteljiahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte", 1929, Bd 7, N. 1; Koelsch H. F., Der Impressionismus bei Debussy, Düsseldorf, 1937 (Diss.); Schulz H.≈G., Musikalischer Impressionismus und impressionistischer Klavierstil, Würzburg, 1938; Kroher, E., Impressionismus in der Musik, Lpz., 1957.
Wikipedia
Impressionism
Impressionism(, from impression- impression) - a trend in art of the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries, which originated in France and then spread throughout the world, whose representatives sought to develop methods and techniques that made it possible to most naturally and vividly capture the real world in its mobility and variability, to convey their fleeting impressions. Usually, the term "impressionism" means a direction in painting, although its ideas were also embodied in literature and music, where impressionism also appeared in a certain set of methods and techniques for creating literary and musical works, in which the authors sought to convey life in a sensual, direct form as a reflection of their impressions.
The term "impressionism" arose from the light hand of the critic of the magazine "Le Charivari" Louis Leroy, who titled his feuilleton about the Salon of the Les Misérables "Exhibition of the Impressionists", taking as a basis the title of the painting "Impression. Rising Sun by Claude Monet. Initially, this term was somewhat disparaging and indicated a corresponding attitude towards artists who painted in this manner.
Impressionism (disambiguation)
Impressionism
- Impressionism- direction in art.
- Impressionism is a musical direction.
- Impressionism is a trend in cinema.
- Impressionism is a literary style.
Impressionism (music)
musical impressionism- a musical trend similar to impressionism in painting and parallel to symbolism in literature, which developed in France in the last quarter of the 19th century - the beginning of the 20th century, primarily in the work of Eric Satie, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
The starting point of "impressionism" in music can be considered 1886-1887, when the first impressionistic opuses of Eric Satie were published in Paris - and as a result, five years later, the first works of Claude Debussy in the new style, which received resonance in the professional environment (above all, "The Afternoon of a Faun").
Impressionism (literature)
Impressionism in literature- one of the literary styles that spread in the world in the late XIX - early XX centuries, based on associations.
Appeared under the influence of the eponymous European artistic style. Developed in many European countries, including Russia.
In literature, this style did not develop as a separate direction, and its features were reflected in naturalism and symbolism. The main features of the impressionist style were formulated by the Goncourt brothers in their work "Diary", where the phrase: "Seeing, feeling, expressing - this is all art", has become a central position for many writers.
Impressionism is expressed in the novels of Emile Zola. Also representatives of impressionism in literature are Thomas Mann, Oscar Wilde, Stefan Zweig. An example of poetic impressionism is Paul Verlaine's collection Romances Without Words (1874). In Russia, the influence of impressionism was experienced by Konstantin Balmont and Innokenty Annensky.
The mood of impressionism also touched dramaturgy (impressionist drama), where passive perception of the world, analysis of moods, states of mind invaded the plays, disparate impressions are concentrated in dialogues. These signs are reflected in the works of Arthur Schnitzler, Maurice Maeterlinck, Hugo von Hoffmanstl.
Impressionism in literature in particular, and in art in general, lost its significance in the mid-1920s.
Impressionism (cinema)
Impressionism in cinema- current in cinema.
Cinema, being a visual art, like painting, became the successor of the traditions of French Impressionist artists at the beginning of the 20th century. It appeared under the influence of the painting style of the same name and also developed mainly in France.
The term "film-impressionism" was introduced by Henri Langlois, a French film enthusiast, and was actively used by the film theorist Georges Sadoul. The French director and actor Abel Gance is considered to be a representative of film impressionism. A photogenic vision of reality and a visual reflection of psychological emotions became the program concept of a new trend formulated by Louis Delluc. The actress Eva Francis, Delluc's wife, played in many Impressionist films, among them "Fever" (1921) and "The Woman from Nowhere" (1922) by Delluc and "El Dorado" (1921) by L'Herbier.
The film impressionists believed that cinema should speak to the viewer in its own language, using only its own set of expressive means. They made a significant contribution to the theory and aesthetics of cinema. In the early 1920s, articles appeared in periodicals and books about the specifics of film impressionism, about the composition of the film image in it, about rhythm in cinema.
Examples of the use of the word impressionism in literature.
The passion for photography was, of course, embedded in the Japanese long before the invention of Daguerre - sincere impressionism, the desire to fix the moment.
This music is the younger sister of the poetic symbolism of Verlaine and Laforgue and impressionism in painting.
Opinions were exchanged on the steps, bad words flashed: impressionism, post impressionism and even symbolism.
This is the opposition of a camera obscura, working according to the Cartesian laws of linear perspective, impressionism with its spreading of the color layer over the surface, is extremely significant.
Germany, which gave the world Dürer and Cranach, was unable to put forward a single outstanding master in the field of modern fine art, although German expressionism in painting and the Munich urban school in architecture were interesting and original trends, and German artists reflected in their work all the evolutions and ups , which were typical for impressionism, Cubism and Dadaism.
This political impressionism, of course, does no credit to oppositional analytical minds.
picturesque style impressionism lies in the negation of the external form of real things and the reproduction of their internal form - a polychrome mass.
Although Ravel is rightly called an impressionist composer, however, the characteristic features impressionism manifested itself in him only in some works, while in the rest classical clarity and proportionality of structures, purity of style, clarity of lines and jewelry in finishing details prevail.
Subsequently, the composer attacked the epigones impressionism, contrasting its vagueness and refinement with the clarity, simplicity, and rigor of linear writing.
But not only this connected the Polish composer with the French impressionism: the years of the First World War include the formation of a new style of Shimanovsky, a more modern harmonic language that no longer fits into the framework of classical romantic harmony.
Much really makes Debussy related to the picturesque impressionism: self-sufficing brilliance of elusive, fluid-moving moments, love for the landscape, airy trembling of space.
It is no coincidence that Debussy is considered the main representative impressionism in music.
Interregional Academy of Personnel Management
Severodonetsk Institute
Department of General Education and Humanities
Control work in cultural studies
Impressionism as a direction in art
Completed:
group student
ІН23-9-06 BUB (4. Od)
Sheshenko Sergey
Checked:
Candidate of Laws, Assoc.
Smolina O.O.
Severodonetsk 2007
Introduction
4. Post-impressionism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Applications
Introduction
An important phenomenon of European culture in the second half of the 19th century. was the artistic style of impressionism, which became widespread not only in painting, but in music and fiction. And yet it arose in painting. Impressionism (French impressionism, from impression - impression), a trend in art of the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries. It took shape in French painting in the late 1860s and early 1870s. (the name arose after the exhibition in 1874, which exhibited the painting by C. Monet "Impression. The Rising Sun").
Signs of the impressionistic style are the absence of a clearly defined form and the desire to convey the subject in fragmentary, instantly fixing every impression strokes, which, however, revealed their hidden unity and connection when reviewing the whole. As a special style, impressionism, with its principle of the value of the "first impression", made it possible to tell the story through such, as it were, seized at random details that apparently violated the strict coherence of the narrative plan and the principle of selecting the essential, but with their "lateral truth" gave the story extraordinary brightness and freshness.
In temporal arts, the action unfolds in time. Painting, as it were, is capable of capturing only one single moment in time. Unlike cinema, she always has one "frame". How to convey movement in it? One of these attempts to capture the real world in its mobility and variability was the attempt of the creators of the direction in painting, called impressionism (from the French impression). This direction brought together various artists, each of which can be characterized as follows. An impressionist is an artist who conveys his direct impression of nature, sees in it the beauty of variability and impermanence, recreates the visual sensation of bright sunlight, the play of colored shadows, using a palette of pure unmixed colors, from which black and gray are banished. Sunlight streams, vapors rise from the damp earth. Water, melting snow, plowed land, swaying grass in the meadows do not have clear, frozen outlines. Movement, which was previously introduced into the landscape as an image of moving figures, as a result of the action of natural forces - the wind, driving clouds, swaying trees, is now replaced by peace. But this peace of inanimate matter is one of the forms of its movement, which is conveyed by the very texture of painting - dynamic strokes of different colors, not constrained by the rigid lines of the drawing.
1. The birth of impressionism and its founders
The formation of impressionism began with the painting by E. Manet (1832-1893) "Breakfast on the Grass" (1863). The new style of painting was not immediately accepted by the public, who accused the artists of not being able to draw, throwing paint scraped off the palette onto the canvas. So, the pink Rouen cathedrals of Monet seemed implausible to both the audience and fellow artists - the best of the artist's pictorial series ("Morning", "With the first rays of the sun", "Noon"). The artist did not seek to present the cathedral on canvas at different times of the day - he competed with the Gothic masters to absorb the viewer with the contemplation of magical light and color effects. The facade of the Rouen Cathedral, like most Gothic cathedrals, hides the mystical spectacle of the bright colored stained-glass windows of the interior coming to life from the sunlight. The lighting inside the cathedrals varies depending on which direction the sun is shining from, cloudy or clear weather. One of Monet's paintings owes its appearance to the word "impressionism". This canvas was indeed an extreme expression of the innovation of the emerging pictorial method and was called "Sunrise at Le Havre". The compiler of the catalog of paintings for one of the exhibitions suggested that the artist call it something else, and Monet, having crossed out "in Le Havre", put "impression". And a few years after the appearance of his works, they wrote that Monet "reveals a life that no one before him was able to catch, about which no one even knew." In the paintings of Monet began to notice the disturbing spirit of the birth of a new era. So, in his work appeared "serial" as a new phenomenon of painting. And she drew attention to the problem of time. The artist's painting, as noted, snatches one "frame" from life, with all its incompleteness and incompleteness. And this gave impetus to the development of the series as successive shots. In addition to the "Rouen Cathedrals" Monet creates a series of "Station Saint-Lazare", in which the paintings are interconnected and complement each other. However, it was impossible to combine the "frames" of life into a single tape of impressions in painting. This has become the task of cinema. Historians of cinema believe that the reason for its emergence and wide distribution was not only technical discoveries, but also an urgent artistic need for a moving image, and the paintings of the Impressionists, in particular Monet, became a symptom of this need. It is known that one of the plots of the first film session in history, arranged by the Lumiere brothers in 1895, was "Arrival of the Train". Steam locomotives, station, rails were the subject of a series of seven paintings "Gare Saint-Lazare" by Monet, exhibited in 1877.
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), together with C. Monet and A. Sisley, created the core of the impressionist movement. During this period, Renoir worked to develop a lively, colorful artistic style with a feathery brushstroke (known as Renoir's iridescent style); creates many sensual nudes ("Bathers"). In the 80s, he gravitated more and more towards the classical clarity of images in his work. Most of all, Renoir liked to write children's and youthful images and peaceful scenes of Parisian life ("Flowers", "Young man walking with dogs in the forest of Fontainebleau", "Vase of flowers", "Bathing in the Seine", "Lisa with an umbrella", " Lady in a Boat", "Riders in the Bois de Boulogne", "Ball at Le Moulin de la Galette", "Portrait of Jeanne Samary" and many others). His work is characterized by light and transparent landscapes, portraits, glorifying the sensual beauty and joy of being. But Renoir owns the following thought: "For forty years I have been going to the discovery that the queen of all colors is black paint." Renoir's name is synonymous with beauty and youth, that time of human life when spiritual freshness and the flowering of physical strength are in perfect harmony.
2. Impressionism in the works of C. Pissarro, C. Monet, E. Degas, A. Toulouse-Lautrec
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) - a representative of impressionism, the author of light, clean-colored landscapes ("Plowed Land"). His paintings are characterized by a soft restrained gamut. In the late period of creativity, he turned to the image of the city - Rouen, Paris (Montmartre Boulevard, Opera passage in Paris). In the second half of the 80s. was influenced by neo-impressionism. He also worked as a scheduler.
Claude Monet (1840-1926) - the leading representative of impressionism, the author of landscapes thin in color, filled with light and air. In the series of canvases "Haystacks", "Rouen Cathedral" he sought to capture the fleeting, instantaneous states of the light and air environment at different times of the day. From the name of Monet's landscape Impression. The rising sun happened and the name of the direction is impressionism. In a later period, features of decorativeism appeared in the work of C. Monet.
The creative style of Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is characterized by impeccably accurate observation, the strictest drawing, sparkling, exquisitely beautiful coloring. He became famous for his freely asymmetrical angular composition, knowledge of facial expressions, postures and gestures of people of different professions, accurate psychological characteristics: "Blue Dancers", "Star", "Toilet", "Ironers", "Dancers' Rest". Degas is an excellent master of the portrait. Under the influence of E. Manet, he switched to the everyday genre, depicting the Parisian street crowd, restaurants, horse races, ballet dancers, laundresses, and the rudeness of the smug bourgeois. If the works of Manet are bright and cheerful, then in Degas they are colored with sadness and pessimism.
Closely connected with Impressionism is the work of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). He worked in Paris, where he painted cabaret dancers and singers and prostitutes in his particular style, characterized by bright colors, bold composition and brilliant technique. His lithographic posters enjoyed great success.
3. Impressionism in sculpture and music
A contemporary and colleague of the Impressionists was the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). His dramatic, passionate, heroically sublime art glorifies the beauty and nobility of a person, it is permeated with an emotional impulse (the Kiss group, The Thinker, etc.), it is characterized by the courage of realistic searches, the vitality of images, and energetic pictorial modeling. Sculpture has a fluid form, acquires a kind of unfinished character, which makes his work related to impressionism and at the same time makes it possible to create the impression of the painful birth of forms from spontaneous amorphous matter. The sculptor combined these qualities with the drama of the idea, the desire for philosophical reflection ("The Bronze Age", "Citizens of Calais"). The artist Claude Monet called him the greatest of the greats. Rodin owns the words: "Sculpture is the art of recesses and bulges."
