Albert Boime and Impressionism's Dirty Secret
peter nelson
that Impressionism owes its rise to a complicty between
the Frecnch government of the early 1870's and the
French bourgeois to try to paint over the horrors of their
loss the Prussia and the rise of the Paris Commune with
happy, idyllic scenes. As it says in the introduction,
Impressionist paintings of "exuberant street scenes, spaces
of leisure and entertainment, sunlit parks and gardens, the
entire concourse of movement as filtered through an atmosphere
of scintillating light and color all constitute an effort to reclaim
Paris visually and symbolically for the bourgeoisie."
I've always found the fact that you could attend hundreds of
museum exhibitions of Impressionist paintings and never once
have any inkling that some of the most significant military and
political upheavals in French history were going on all around
them rather troubling. This is all the more ironic because the
Impressionsts were originally motivated by a desire to break
away from the the French Academy's insistence on painting
only highly idealized subjects from a distant and mythologized
world.
---peter
Paul Isaacs
There are plenty of art periods where you don't get an inkling of the
social and political problems of the time. As an artist you may want to
escape politcs, etc., or you may not. Much of modern art tries to
screen out society, but to assume that this results from a specific
political purpose is nonsense. Boime likes to immerse art into the
social goings on. That's his bag. But he usually goes way to far
twisting and turning, e.g. his early efforts at making positive
assumptions from negative data. If you like his constructs, fine. But
don't try to imbue the art with them.
--
Paul Isaacs
PLEASE remove NOSPAM and the extra .com
from the reply address.
peter nelson
Paul Isaacs wrote in message <371AA9...@NOSPAMerols.com.com>...
>peter nelson wrote:
>>
>> What do people here think of Albert Boime's suggestion
>> that Impressionism owes its rise to a complicty between
>> the Frecnch government of the early 1870's and the
>> French bourgeois to try to paint over the horrors of their
>> loss the Prussia and the rise of the Paris Commune with
>> happy, idyllic scenes. As it says in the introduction,
>> Impressionist paintings of "exuberant street scenes, spaces
>> of leisure and entertainment, sunlit parks and gardens, the
>> entire concourse of movement as filtered through an atmosphere
>> of scintillating light and color all constitute an effort to reclaim
>> Paris visually and symbolically for the bourgeoisie."
>>
>> I've always found the fact that you could attend hundreds of
>> museum exhibitions of Impressionist paintings and never once
>> have any inkling that some of the most significant military and
>> political upheavals in French history were going on all around
>> them rather troubling. This is all the more ironic because the
>> Impressionsts were originally motivated by a desire to break
>> away from the the French Academy's insistence on painting
>> only highly idealized subjects from a distant and mythologized
>> world.
>>
>> ---peter
>
>There are plenty of art periods where you don't get an inkling of the
>social and political problems of the time.
True, but this was historically due to institutional constraints
which specified what was acceptable material - religious themes,
say, or moralistic scenes from the classsics, or propaganda for the
ruling party/family, etc. What distinguished the Impressionsists
was that they got their beginning as a revolt against the French
Academy and the Salon which specied such rules.
The other thing about the Impressionists was that, unlike say,
many American modern artists who were not directly impacted
by issues like racism or the war in Vietnam or other contemporary
issues, many of the Impressionists were directly present or
impacted by the Franco-Prussian war, the siege of Paris, the
Commune.
> As an artist you may want to escape politcs, etc., or you may not.
True, but this is an individual decision. What is striking about the
Impressionists is how almost all of them made this same 'individual'
decision.
---peter
Marilyn
And you Peter, are you presently painting scenes of destruction
to commemorate the bombing of Belgrade? Did you paint the oil fires
of the not so distant Desert War?
Children in Nazi concentration camps painted butterflies. Would
you have them paint swatstikas?
You are discussing _subject matter_ above while the Impressionists
are reknowned for their luminous painting _style_ - they got out of
their studios and (gasp!) they showed brushstrokes instead of blending.
Is that your main objection?
M.
peter nelson
>peter nelson wrote:
>> The other thing about the Impressionists was that, unlike say,
>> many American modern artists who were not directly impacted
>> by issues like racism or the war in Vietnam or other contemporary
>> issues, many of the Impressionists were directly present or
>> impacted by the Franco-Prussian war, the siege of Paris, the
>> Commune.
>And you Peter, are you presently painting scenes of destruction
>to commemorate the bombing of Belgrade? Did you paint the oil fires
>of the not so distant Desert War?
My point EXACTLY! Read the above. If I was currently
living in Belgrade or was present in Kuwait when they set the oil
fields afire I could not HELP but be affected by those things and
it would show in my art one way or the other. The idea of having
dead people lying in the streets, me and all my neighbors
starving, the city being shelled, and the artist happily painting
floral still-lifes has always seemed a bit perverse to me, but
Boime puts it into a bigger picture and makes it seem sinister.
As it is I live a comfortable, insular, upper middle class existence and
I don't even watch TV so these events you describe are not often
present in my consciousness. Just as an author has to write about
what he knows, the painter has to paint what he feels (notice I didn't
say "see") BUT, the Impressionsists were surrounded by, and
directly affected by, the events described above.
---peter
Marilyn
You are living in a military-industrial culture
(even though your direct existence is in suburbia)
but you don't paint war materiale & factories.
You mean that your spirit is not affected at all by world events?
There are two basic ways to respond to them
- we can paint what we long for/ what we hope for
- or we can get right into the turmoil
I'm sure painters whose subject matter was the Exxon Valdez disaster
did not have to go up there and get soaked with bunker crude.
M.
Andrew Werby
<pne...@ultranet.com> wrote:
> What do people here think of Albert Boime's suggestion
> that Impressionism owes its rise to a complicty between
> the Frecnch government of the early 1870's and the
> French bourgeois to try to paint over the horrors of their
> loss the Prussia and the rise of the Paris Commune with
> happy, idyllic scenes.
[One could hardly blame the French for wanting to forget about the
horrors of the Franco-Prussian war. But there is plenty of art from
that period that refers to it, more or less explicitly. You might read
Zola's "Le Debacle" for some atmosphere. I was recently in the Santa
Barbara art museum, where they had a piece that made quite a sensation
in its day- this was an Academic bronze featuring the personification
of Victory bearing an idealized France (in the form of a female nude,
not much the worse for wear) away from the battlefield. People at the
time reacted to it very positively- much more so than to the
Impressionists, who were appreciated better as the century ended. At
the time, the Impressionists got little support from either the Academy,
the Government, or the Bourgeosie.]
>As it says in the introduction,
> Impressionist paintings of "exuberant street scenes, spaces
> of leisure and entertainment, sunlit parks and gardens, the
> entire concourse of movement as filtered through an atmosphere
> of scintillating light and color all constitute an effort to reclaim
> Paris visually and symbolically for the bourgeoisie."
>
> I've always found the fact that you could attend hundreds of
> museum exhibitions of Impressionist paintings and never once
> have any inkling that some of the most significant military and
> political upheavals in French history were going on all around
> them rather troubling. This is all the more ironic because the
> Impressionsts were originally motivated by a desire to break
> away from the the French Academy's insistence on painting
> only highly idealized subjects from a distant and mythologized
> world.
>
> ---peter
[I don't know, Pete- this "Dirty Secret" is (and was) quite well-known, and
is hardly the sordid matter you make it seem- it was a small group of people
looking for a little beauty, as they saw it, in their lives and art. Hardly
something the tabloids would go nuts for...]
Andrew Werby
UNITED ARTWORKS- Sculpture, Jewelry, and other art stuff
http://unitedartworks.com
http://www.computersculpture.com for 3d design tools
peter nelson
Where am I being unclear here? War materials
and factories are not part pf my direct experience.
But the historical events described above WERE
part of the direct experience of several of the
Impressionists.
Many aspects of living in a modern, post-industrial
society ARE part of my direct experience and they
definitely find their way into my self-expression, directly
or indirectly.
---peter
Marilyn
1.Most of the Impressionists lived in middle class comfort as well
as you are now. It is the larger historical context of their
existence that you are concerned with, like War.
2.Like the Impressionists you live in middle class comfort while
your country is at war. Yet, you do not paint the horrors of the
war and you did not paint the horrors of the Gulf War.
If the war has to be in your back yard before it would enter
into your painting subject matter why not extend that same condition
to the Impressionists?
Furthermore, subjects were not that important to the Impressionists
they were a vehicle for them to enter into a new world of painting,
painting the light. If subject matter were so important
to the impressionists, then why would Monet paint so many
haystacks. The subject was the light on the haystacks.
M.
Dik F Liu
>1.Most of the Impressionists lived in middle class comfort as well
>as you are now. It is the larger historical context of their
>existence that you are concerned with, like War.
>
Actually, Frederic Bazille was killed in the battle in Orleans. Manet took his
rifle and a French easel and joined the army, serving under his old
anti-Impressionist adversary Ernest Meissonier. Degas enlisted too but they
discovered that he was nearly blind in one eye, so he was assigned a desk job.
Cezanne dodged the draft by returning to the South of France, and I think he
was officially declared a draft-dodger. Monet dodged the draft in London.
Pissarro, who was a tad old to fight, joined him there. Monet's stay in London
changed his color sense forever. After the war, it was a source of resentment
for the Impressionists that some stay and fought while other ran. Courbet, a
precursor of the Impressionists, was Director of Museums for the Commune, and
after the war went in to exile in Switzerland. There, depressed and bittered,
he painted bad landscape paintings and drank himself to death.
Folks, all these were covered in Art History 101.
Dik
Marilyn
Well good for you. You get an 'A' for your hasty compressed version.
M.
Tom Hart
From: Dik F Liu, dik...@aol.com
Date: 20 Apr 1999 20:02:09 GMT
In article <19990420160209...@ngol05.aol.com> Dik F Liu,
dik...@aol.com writes:
>In article <371C7D...@bc.ca>, Marilyn <m...@bc.ca> writes:
>
>>1.Most of the Impressionists lived in middle class comfort as well
>>as you are now. It is the larger historical context of their
>>existence that you are concerned with, like War.
>>
>
>Actually, Frederic Bazille was killed in the battle in Orleans. Manet
took his
>rifle and a French easel and joined the army
... The easel may have been French, but it was not the "French easel"
that we know today. That wasn't invented until the 20th century by a POW
(in WWI, I believe) who's name, oddly enough, was Julian...At least
that's the information that came with the French easel that I bought a
couple of years ago. (I know someone will correct me if I'm wrong...)
Cheers,
Tom
peter nelson
French, but it was not the "French easel"
>that we know today. That wasn't invented until the 20th century by a POW
>(in WWI, I believe) who's name, oddly enough, was Julian...At least
>that's the information that came with the French easel that I bought a
>couple of years ago. (I know someone will correct me if I'm wrong...)
On this n.g. someone will correct you even if you're right!
---peter
Dik F Liu
>. The easel may have been French, but it was not the "French easel"
>that we know today. That wasn't invented until the 20th century by a POW
>(in WWI, I believe) who's name, oddly enough, was Julian...
Good call. Actually, artists in the olden days carried a small easel bundled to
a separate paint box. Such was a contraption shown in Courbet's The Meeting or
Good-day Monsieur Courbet from the 1850's. But a far as I know, the first real
French easel - with the paint box and easel built as one unit - was used by
Camille Pissarro. It had wheels to push it about like a hand cart. Photographs
from the time clearly show the artists using such a device. Now watch someone
come here to tell me that I got it all wrong.
Whatever Manet used, he wasn't very productive during the war. Fending the
Prussians must be hard work. A few prints and drawings of soldiers, and a very
nice watercolor of a small battle scene, are all the I know of from this
period.
Dik