Lecture 24

"A commonplace woman of the demimonde, as naked as can be, shamelessly lolls between two dandies dressed to the teeth. These latter look like schoolboys on a holiday, perpetrating an outrage to play the man…this is a young man's practical joke- a shameful, open sore." - Gardner

"I myself shouldn't like to meet this young man...I should be obliged to tell him I don't understand anything about his paintings, and I don't want to be disagreeable with him." - Gustave Courbet


Edouard Manet. Luncheon on the Grass. 1863.	Titian and Giorgione. The Pastoral Concert. c. 1508.

Manet breaks with convention by:

No chiaroscuro

No linear perspective

Not a classic landscape

Figures do not seem to relate to one another

Thick and full brush strokes that call attention to the act of painting

Vast planes of color

Portion of the painting left unfinished


Titian. Venus of Urbino. c. 1538.	Edouard Manet. Olympia. 1863.

Titian vs. Manet
Forms	Rounded and soft	Angular and flat
Gaze	Looks lovingly at the viewer	Confronts the viewer with a cold and indifferent stare
Pet	Dog sleeps	Cat hisses

Nadar. Sarah Bernhardt. 1855. Photograph printed from a collodion negative.
Preble, Duane, Sarah Preble and Patrick Frank. Artforms. Seventh ed. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.

Avant-garde = artists or works that are novel or experimental

Relates to the military term for soldiers who explore the battlefield ahead of the advancing army

Suggests a small group of intellectuals that open pathways through new cultural or political terrain for society to follow

The Impressionists radically departed from Academic art by rejecting:

Linear perspective

Balanced composition

Idealized figures

Chiaroscuro

Painting in the controlled environment of the studio

The Impressionists were interested in:

Representing immediate visual sensations through color and light

Depicting the fleeting qualities of color

Experimenting with short, choppy brushstrokes

Claude Monet. Impression: Sunrise. 1872.
Preble, Duane, Sarah Preble and Patrick Frank. Artforms. Seventh ed. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.

Claude Monet. On the Seine At Bennecourt (Au Bord De L'eau. Bennecourt). 1868.
Preble, Duane, Sarah Preble and Patrick Frank. Artforms. Seventh ed. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.

Moulin de la Galette = the Pancake Mill
an old-fashioned Sunday afternoon dance hall

Pierre- Auguste Renoir. The Luncheon of the Boating Party. 1881.
Preble, Duane, Sarah Preble and Patrick Frank. Artforms. Seventh ed. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.

"For me, a picture should be a pleasant thing, joyful and pretty- yes pretty! There are quite enough unpleasant things in life without the need for us to manufacture more." - Renoir