Impressionism: Revenge of the Nice

1) How does the presenter define Impressionism when he enters the Metropolitan Museum
in New York?
Delectable, charming colors. A total absence of darkness, and a happy woozy soft-edgeness.
Impressionism is the first movement of modern art.
Because of its charm, we forget that Impressionism is also avant-gardism. We think
Impressionism was the last time art was understandable, and then theres a succession of more
and more outrageous hoaxes getting higher and higher into obscurity, and thats the modern art
tradition that were still in.
2) Who were the two artists who opened the door for Impressionism?
Gustave Courbet and douard Manet.
3) Who is the quintessential impressionist?
Claude Monet
4) Who turned Impressionism into Modern Art? Why?
Paul Czanne, because hes the one who makes Impressionisms niceness complicated.
5) What radical idea unites the Impressionist family of painters?
They think art should be real and not false.
What is reality? Reality is literal and numb. An artist casts his head in his own frozen blood
(Marc Quinns Self); reality is politics that seem almost alien, so the alienating sophisticated
playfulness of todays political art almost makes sense; reality now is a big confusion about
beliefs, so instead of being hungry for the old moral certainties of the culture of art, its grand
ambitions to tell us all how to be, were hungry for personality, for confession, for glamorous
individualism.
6) Paris, 1855. What was the first step towards Impressionism?

It was a colossal event, which the public cant miss: The Pavilion of the Real, put up by Gustave
Courbet.
7) Courbet was considered a rebel attacking the establishment. Which is the building that
represented establishment back then?
Le Palais de LIndustrie, erected for the Paris World Fair (Universal Exhibition) in 1855.
8) What could the visitors see in Courbets allegorical painting The Painters Studio?
Veiled portraits of government people and the emperor Napoleon III, who is shown as a poacher
because he stole the empire. Napoleon III seized power illegally in a coup dtat. He had his
enemies executed or exiled. His governments had run like a dictatorship. Courbet said that these
were just commercial people (shopkeepers): They had to be disguised because no one could
openly criticise the government. No one could put themselves up against the emperor. The
painting is an allegory of society. On the right corner are the arty people of society, and in the
middle Courbet himself.
9) Why is Courbets The Painters Studio so big?
Because it has to fight a big institution, the one who has the ultimately say about what art is. The
Salon of Fine Art held every year at the Louvre.
Colour in impressionism, the directness of the paint handling, the open loose rough look of the
way it is done makes the mundane look special. In our time now, all visual media (high art, TV,
movies, ads) start out from the mundane. They emphasize the everyday. In the 19 th century,
however, art was expected to transcend the everyday.
10) What is the minor salon style Courbet is aware of, known as little, roughly done
landscapes? Realism
11) Courbets eureka moment was when in 1848 he realized that being in the art world he
could be politically active. Which was his political association?
Bohemian, left winged and anarchist, close to the Commune but not involved in it (he was a
pacifist and they were violent).
12) Whats the new handling in Courbets paintings of pheasants lives?

The paint is mashed and scraped. Courbet does a lot of it with a knife, instead of a brush.
13) Today, people assume that Impressionism is lovely because it comes from lovely times.
In fact, it was a horrible time. In 1870, after 20 years in power, the Emperor foolishly
decided to start a war with Prussia, which France quickly lost. Paris refused to give up
and a breakaway government was created: the Paris Commune of 1871. Which were
their aims?
An end to exploitation, democracy, equality and no more religion.
14) What does Courbet give to Impressionism?
Rough surfaces, and being against the salon. Being for truth and against lies. You cant have
impressionism without colours.
15) What does douard Manet stand for?
Manets take on the essential is colour. He releases colour from being an add-on and makes it
something in itself. Not only something, but the main thing.
16) What happened to Paris during Manets career, from the 1860s to the 1880s?
Paris was modernized, it was completely transformed, from a medieval city to a gleaming
streamlined modern city.
17) The rules of bourgeois life had set up in Manets time. We still abide by them right now,
which are they?
The compensation for never asking for true freedom and true happiness. Its great ladders of
escapism and consumerism.
18) What does the poet Baudelaire call Manet?
The painter of modern life.
19) Irony works well for Manet. Whats the irony about his Portrait of Emile Zola? How is
that reflected in our current times?

Its a portrait of the realist novelist, but also a painting about yellow and black. Its a fantastic
visual object. This kind of thing influences our moment in a perverse way: The genius of our turn
of price art is the way pinpoint vivifies our modern desire not for visually marvellous objects, but
for ironic ideas which are hovered, disembodied, nearby to visually straightforward objects.
20) What is Manets first painting of modern life? How does the painting work visually?
Music in the Tulieries Gardens. It shows a new aesthetic experience: visually unpredictable and
lively. It shows the painters superiority over the objects of its gaze. A green spread against the
spread of pinky orange. The black clothes of the men and a jumble through the orange. The line
of black hats and the unreal seeming tree trunks cutting through the jumble. Then, the accents of
bright colour: blue, red, and the greys, whites and creams and peaches.
21) What is Manets Luncheon on the Grass mainly about?
Modern sexuality and prostitution.
22) Who is Manets main model?
Victorine Meurent.
23) What is Manets Luncheon in the Studio mainly about?
Its about making black glow. As a scene, its completely incoherent: Nobody looks at anybody
else. Oysters and coffee are in the same room at the same time (?)
24) Which is Manets last major painting? What is wrong with the mirror reflection?
A Bar at the Folies-Bergre proved Manets ignorance of perspective.
25) A main impressionist was Claude Monet. What characterises his work, highly
influenced by Courbet and Manet?
Reality, sensuality and colour. Rawness, directness, painting outdoors in nature is what Monet
brings to the mix.

26) It was Monet the one who founded the Impressionist group. There were about twelve
members, but it was Monet who most stood for its principles. What were these main
principles?
Movement, spontaneity, and light.
27) Who did Monet meet at the Swiss Academy?
Renoir.
As a young man, Monets idea of success, like Manets and Courbets, was to get in the Salon. It
was because of Manets influence that Monet thought colour was paintings role into the future.
28) Which type of colour was to be used by Monet?
He copied dresses from illustrations in magazines, he thought about fashion colours as well as
Natures colour.
29) Monets Women in the Garden has something very important in painting, but which
is very rare to be discussed outside the world of art criticism. What is it?
Its doing something formal. He makes a style idea come to life. You can see that very vividly in
the way he connects the brown hair of the woman (Camille Doncieux, Monets lover) with a
patch of brown at the base of a tree. Theres a purely visual connection. Hes making wibbly
edges connect: The edges of the foliage and the grass, the edges of the dresses, the edges of the
flowers. He spots those flowers with white and he spots that dress with black. Its very formal
painting. He might not know hes doing something quite so formal, he might think hes coming at
it completely naturally, but in that natural is the formal.
30) Formal in an art context doesnt mean being polite or wearing small clothes. What does
it mean, then? How did Monet approach that idea?
It means visual power, visual noticeability. Monet thought he got this from painting outdoors,
painting directly from nature.

Monet thought he should follow where nature led. In the newly modernized France, the
countryside represented a new form of leisure for Parisians, who caught the train at Saint-Lazare
Sation and spent a weekend at these semi-rural spots.
31) In 1869, worked out in La Grenouillre with Renoir. What did they want to paint?
A big salon scene of a floating restaurant.
32) In Renoirs oil sketches of La Grenouillre, you see the individuality of the modern
clothes styles, the difference between one outfit and another. With Monet, theres much
less to write a social significance thesis about: some people in the water and some
silhouette figures painted quicker than it takes to finish this sentence. Monet thought
these sketches were the stepping stone towards the real thing. What was the real thing?
What was the impressionist style that Monet discovered?
The looseness of the sketches was the real thing. The real now is light effects alone, nothing
politically aggressive or sexily risky has to be in the scene as well to show that theres a
challenge going on. Monet is making how a picture works be the exciting thing, not what is the
picture of. Physical stuff and its changing jostling busy relating, one bet against another,
everywhere is now the beginning and the ending. The only thing.
33) Impressionism is the only modern art movement that most ordinary people have heard
of. It is also disregarded by todays officially approved avant garde. Why?
Its considered not serious enough because it seems optimistic. Being optimistic seems nave.
Thats a misconception, though.
34) All Monet thinks about is colour values: He stares at colours until his eyes pop out. At
that time, painting was suffering a pressure from another revolution? Which one?
Why?
Photography, which was invented in the 1830s. It showed a world a bit like impressionism, a
world like it really is, light hitting objects.
35) In which way does Impressionism challenge photography?

Impressionism wants to be scientific, but at the same time emotional, full of feeling. It shows a
world aesthetically heightened. It isnt exactly how the world is, but an idealized version of the
world, an intensified world.
36) Monets Poppy Field is the taking off point for colour arrangement. Why?
The blue in the parasol repeats the blue in the sky. Its making everything tied together on the
terms of the painterly language that hes using. He doesnt bother to make a mother and child
look different to another mother and child. Both sets are Camille and Jean just put in different
parts of the same painting.
37) Monets house in Argenteuil in December 1873: Renoir, Degas, Monet and a few others
officially formed their own independent group. What was their name?
The Anonymous Society of Artists.
38) What characterizes Monets Impression Sunrise?
Thin washes, intense colour, thick orange and white making sunlight at dawn. Politics just
evaporated then.
39) In which way is Impressionism political?
Impressionists responded to a major social change by radically modifying the relationship
between society and art. They made a kind of art that deliberately opposed societys values.
40) How did Monet become a millionaire?
It was caused by the successful promotion of Impressionism in America by art dealers in the
1880s, as well as his own self-promotion.
41) Monet allied himself with different art dealers and set them against each other in order
to drive up his prices. He painted scenes in sets to give his exhibition a unified theme.
Which were Monets most famous series?
The Rouen Cathedral series and the Haystack series, which captured different moments of the
day in different lights.

42) Which of Monets late series of work took the Impressionist style out to its further
extreme of pure floating atmospheric environment?
Monets Water Lilies
43) Monets never fitted in the avant gardism. Picasso and Braque had invented Cubism,
Surrealism was huge during World War I, a movement radically opposed to beauty.
Monet, however, came back into fashion afterwards. When? How?
In the 1950s, when the New York abstract expressionism came in.
44) Paul Czanne had an absolutely difficult personality: Why is he believed to have taken
Impressionism into Modern Art?
He takes the spontaneity and movement of Monet and puts in structure. He slows impressionism
down, he puts real difficulty in with sensual pleasure.
45) From whom did Czanne learn Impressionism?
Camille Pisarro
46) Describe Czannes technique in a few sentences:
Czanne ultimately came to regard color, line, and "form" as constituting one and the same
thing, or inseparable aspects for describing how the human eye actually experiences nature.
Unsatisfied with the Impressionist dictum that painting is primarily a reflection of visual
perception, Czanne sought to make of his artistic practice a new kind of analytical discipline. In
his hands, the canvas itself takes on the role of a screen where an artist's visual sensations are
registered as he gazes intensely, and often repeatedly, at a given subject.
Paul Czanne used heavy brush strokes during his early years and thickly layered paint onto the
canvas. The texture of the compositions is tangible and the marks of his palette brush can be
obviously

discerned.

Czanne's early work has previously been called 'violent' in nature because of the hasty brush
work. Before he became friends with Camille Pissarro Czanne worked mainly within his studio,

painting from his imagination. However after meeting Pissarro Czanne occasionally moved his
painting outside and began painting from nature. As a result his style and technique became
more structured although his brushstrokes were still thick and heavy. Also, his works became
brighter in color (although he still preferred to work inside with darker shades).
In the late 1870s the texture of Czanne's compositions became smoother and he attempted to
create form using his paintbrush. Rather than work from sketches he was influenced by Monet's
ability to create shapes on the canvas and applied color with big, broad strokes.
Many of Czanne's compositions were left incomplete because of the difficulty of finishing a
piece of art work. He took months to finish any piece and his style made working en plein air too
challenging.

Thus

he

returned

to

the

studio

and

worked

there

instead.

In his later years his style and technique continued to shift as he learned more about his craft.
Method:
Czanne was highly analytical of his subjects and perceived them as different shapes that could
be placed together to make an overall form. He created his works slowly, building upon each
previous figure with a new outline. Using this method it took Paul Czanne months to finish a
portrait or a still-life. This technique became such a problem that Czanne was unable to use
real flowers because they would wilt before he was able to finish his painting.
Although Czanne did use drawings and sketches before he placed his paintbrush to canvas a lot
of the work was done on the canvas itself. He found working from nature to be extremely arduous
and for him returning to the scene of a landscape was often more challenging than completing
the painting itself. Czanne's complicated method of painting explains why he often painted the
same subject matter time and time again.