Today I went to the "Master's of Paris" exhibition at the National Gallery. They were showing various paintings of Parisian artists such as Monet, Manet, Gaugain, Van Gogh and Lautrec. The task was to find the painting that moved you the most (and connect it to the development of the Modernist Movement).
MONET, Claude 1904, London Parliament; sun through the fog, oil on canvas, Musée D'Orsay, France, taken from National Gallery of Australia Website
Monet's "Sun Through the Fog" was my favourite impressionist painting at the Master's of Paris Exhibition. I was first attracted to to it because of the colours and the way they were used to create the sun's light shining through the fog. I was also very impressed with the way Monet created the fog using tiny strokes of complimentary colours.
As with most Monet's, from far away, you can clearly discern what is in the picture but as you move closer the small brush strokes of different colours on top of each other become apparent. This illusion is the root of pointillism, a style of painting made famous by Seurat (another french artist). It is this particular style of painting that led to a world-wide discovery of the "essential". Painting was no longer a mere impression of the things and people around you, it was what it was, paint on canvas. The idea that paint could be used in so many different ways to portray so MANY different tangible and INTANGIBLE things pathed the way to the Modernist movement which incorporates many sub-genres of art, particularly Minimalist painting and sculpture
In my view, Modernism evolved from various different art movements rejecting social norms. Here is a VERY basic schematic:
As with most Monet's, from far away, you can clearly discern what is in the picture but as you move closer the small brush strokes of different colours on top of each other become apparent. This illusion is the root of pointillism, a style of painting made famous by Seurat (another french artist). It is this particular style of painting that led to a world-wide discovery of the "essential". Painting was no longer a mere impression of the things and people around you, it was what it was, paint on canvas. The idea that paint could be used in so many different ways to portray so MANY different tangible and INTANGIBLE things pathed the way to the Modernist movement which incorporates many sub-genres of art, particularly Minimalist painting and sculpture
In my view, Modernism evolved from various different art movements rejecting social norms. Here is a VERY basic schematic:
- Impressionists rejected Classicism and moved art out into the real world. They painted people and workers and landscapes and worked with reality to form emotional impressions of the world.
- Post-Impressionists rejected the Impressionists because there were too many limitations. They painted anything and everything and worked on flatening the image to show that painting came down was essentially paint and could represent ANYTHING.
- Modernism combines every aspect of art that is or was at one stage controversial. Modernist art is representative. A line on a piece of paper, given the right context, could represent the struggles of the people in Afganistan.
... Well that's how I see it anyway.
