After Impressionism

1
After Impressionism
2

• While it was ridiculed by the Salon and dismissed
  by the art establishment, Impressionism was to
  have a profound effect on the work of young
  European avant-garde artists, many of whom
  experimented with Impressionist technique in the
  1870s and 1880s. Impressionisms focus on the
  fleeting moment, objective realism, colour and
  light, and its preoccupation with modern life
  excited these painters.

3
(No Transcript)
4

• However, by the mid-1880s some artists on the
  fringe of the Impressionist movement were
  becoming dissatisfied by the limitations of
  Impressionist painting. Impressionisms
  concentration on the fleeting and the casual
  resulted in work that was seen to be trivial
  without meaning or content. The tendency of
  Impressionist paintings to focus on the leisure
  pursuits of the bourgeoisie (wealthy middle
  classes) sat uneasily with the Socialist
  ideologies of many young painters. The hurried
  application of paint in an attempt to capture
  light through colour, often led to paintings
  which appeared sketchy or formless.

5

• These limitations proved too restrictive for a
  number of artists who sought new means of
  representing their ideas in paint. These artists
  are often called the Post-Impressionists,
  although this was not a term that any of them
  identified with.

6

• Some of theses artists had exhibited with the
  Impressionists and described themselves as Neo-
  Impressionists or The New Impressionists

7

• Some are quite accurately considered Symbolists,
  due to the way they used colours and imagery to
  describe ideas and feelings rather than merely
  representing what was visible.

8

• Divisionism (later to be called Pointillism) was
  adopted by a number of Neo-Impressionists, most
  notably Georges Seurat. This technique was
  influenced both by an Impressionist approach to
  colour, and the theories of contemporary
  scientists on how the eye processed colour.

9

• In Pointillist paintings the canvas is saturated
  with tiny dots of pure colour which are then
  mixed in the eye of the viewer.

10
This was an incredibly slow and painstaking
approach and Seurats largest and most impressive
paintings such as Sunday Afternoon on the Island
of the Grande Jatte (1884-6) were carefully
composed using a large number of preliminary
studies.
This painting lacks much of the spontaneity and
freedom of Impressionist painting, but has a
sense of composition, Classicism and
monumentality that is missing in Impressionist
paintings. Unlike Impressionist paintings, this
work is rich in content, and addresses social
issues such as class inequality.
11

• Other Post-Impressionist approaches include
  Cloisonnism (where images were reduced to flat
  planes of, often bright, colour surrounded by
  dark lines)

Emile Bernard, Breton Harvesters
12

• and Intimism (where everyday scenes were painted
  using, often patterned areas of muted colour).

Eduard Vuillard, Sleep, 1891
13

• Both of these approaches owe much to the
  popularity of Japanese prints in Europe in the
  second half of the 19th century.

14

• In Japanese prints images lacked many of the
  conventions of European painting. The large areas
  of flat colour, the emphasis on line and the lack
  of naturalistic perspective forced many
  Post-Impressionist painters to reconsider the
  possibilities of oil painting. Some artists also
  developed an interest in non-European Art and
  folk Art which was to influence their work.

15

• While Impressionist Art can be seen as a break
  from the art that preceded it, many
  Post-Impressionist artists were more prepared to
  allow great European Art of the past to influence
  their painting.

16

• There are Artists working in the
  Post-Impressionist period who stand alone from
  any school or group. The most famous of these is
  the Dutchman, Vincent Van Gogh who from 1880
  (aged 27) to his suicide a decade later devoted
  his life to Art with a religious zeal, creating
  over 800 paintings.

The Sewer, 1888
17

• Van Goghs mature work is typified by rich
  surfaces of thickly applied paint, with the
  patterns of the brushstroke clearly emphasised
  and a use of bold often unnaturalistic colours.
  His paintings are charged with energy and an
  emotional intensity that creates a stark contrast
  with the work of the Impressionists.

Starry Night, 1889
18

• The Impressionists Positivist approach led to
  painting which aimed to directly capture in paint
  whatever the eye could see. In contrast, Paul
  Cézanne wrote The eye is not enough, reflection
  is needed. For Cézanne, painting required
  meaning.

Boy with Skull, 1898
19

• Cézanne is famously quoted as wanting to re-do
  Poussin again from nature. In his landscapes,
  Cézanne wanted to achieve the sense of order and
  composition present in the classical landscapes
  of old Masters such as Poussin but combine it
  with the energy, colour and observational rigour
  of Impressionism

20

• The monumentality of Cézannes greatest
  landscapes is achieved through an emphasis on
  form. In a letter to the painter and critic Emile
  Bernard, Cézanne advised to treat nature by the
  cylinder, the sphere, the cone. Every form, from
  the foliage of a pine tree to the famous rock of
  Mont-Saint-Victoire, is treated with an
  underlying weight and structure.

Cezannes use of very deliberately placed,
strong, directional brushstrokes, underlines the
sense of structure and timelessness his
landscapes.
21

• Cézannes interest in combining an almost
  sculptural modelling of forms with creating a
  sense of harmonious balance in the overall canvas
  is perhaps most visible in his many still-life
  paintings

• By simultaneously representing different
  viewpoints, distorting perspective, flattening
  images, and prioritising the overall design of
  the picture surface, Cézanne redefined the rules
  of oil painting.

22
Paul Gauguin

• French Artist, born Paris, 1848 into a wealthy
  family
• Spent early childhood in Peru with mothers family

23

• While working as a Stockbroker, Gauguins
  interest in Art developed into a passion which
  was to see him leave his job and his family.

Inspired by the Impressionists, most
influentially Camille Pissaro, Gauguins
paintings of the late 70s and early 80s are very
much Impressionist in style. He regularly
exhibited his work with the Impressionists
between 1877 and 1886.
24

• In 1886, Gauguin first started working in
  Brittany and the style of his painting started to
  change.

Four Breton Women Dancing shows an increased
flattening of forms and a lack of spatial depth
that shows the influence of Japanese prints. The
choice of peasant women as subject matter also
makes a stark contrast with the wealthy boating
parties of Monet and Renoir.
25

• Gauguin described his new style as Synthetism, by
  which he meant a style of art in which the form
  (colour planes and lines) is synthesized with the
  major idea or feeling of the subject. Breaking
  away from the Impressionist preoccupation with
  the study of light effects in nature, Gauguin
  sought to develop a new decorative style in art
  based on areas of pure colour (e.g., without
  shaded areas or modeling), a few strong lines,
  and an almost two-dimensional arrangement of
  parts.

Yellow Christ 1889
26

• In Vision After the Sermon (1888) Gauguin
  attempts to combine in one setting two levels of
  reality, the everyday world and the dream world.
  The lower figures are reduced to areas of flat
  patterns, without modeling or

perspective.

• The large colour areas are intense and without
  shadows. The design is so strong that the two
  realities fuse into one visual experience.

27

• Gauguin shared a close and tempestuous friendship
  with Vincent Van Gogh. They were equally devoted
  to a life absorbed in painting, and the time they
  worked together in Arles in the late 1880s was
  highly productive for both artists.

Portrait of Vincent painting Sunflowers, 1888
28
Gauguins and Van Goghs All-night café , Arles,
1888
29

• Gauguin boasted of the great rustic and
  superstitious simplicity of the figures in his
  paintings. He said Civilization makes you sick.
  Gauguin saw in peasant and primitive people an
  honesty and a connection to spirituality which
  lent itself perfectly to his particular brand of
  Symbolist painting.

Proud of his Peruvian heritage, Gauguin saw
himself as a modern day primitive he drew
heavily on non-western art for influence and
famously moved to live and work in Tahiti.
30

• The Tahitian society was a strange mingling of
  paganism and Christianity and many of Gauguins
  paintings displayed the fusing of cultures both
  in their subject matter and in his use of modern
  western art ideas and ancient imagery. For
  example, his Ia Orana Maria (1891) has the
  Madonna and Child as Tahitians, attended by
  Buddhist angels derived from an ancient Buddhist
  temple frieze, so combining Christian, Buddhist
  and Oceanic religions

31

• In many ways, Gauguins paintings became less
  primitive in the South Seas. His colour palette
  remained unnaturalistic but became more
  harmonious and sophisticated. He brought on his
  travels a stock of photographs and reproductions,
  from ancient Egyptian and Greek sculpture
  alongside examples from European painting, and
  his later work shows the breadth of these
  references.

32

• Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892) depicts
  Gauguins teenage lover, struggling to sleep for
  fear of Tupapau (the Spirit of the dead) lurking
  in the shadows. Gauguins version of Manets
  Olympia, makes use of a number of symbolist
  devices, from unnaturalistic colour to the
  presence of a supernatural being.

• Gauguin wrote that the purple of the background
  was used to create a mood of terror and the
  yellow cloth was designed to be unexpected. The
  real and the imagined coexist, resulting in a
  highly emotionally charged image.

33
The End
34
Annah The Javanese, 1894, oil on canvas 116 x 81cm