Day 3 -- The Roots of Rebellion: The Changing World in Which Artists and Intellectuals Operated
Monday we considered the forces that kept official art in France within the limits of tradition. Today we are going to consider the ways in which these limits were broken. Focusing on Impressionist painters, we will explore the deep change in French society that allowed these highly talented individuals to pursue a very different path than their teachers. In particular, we will consider the ways that Romanticism, changes in the economic underpinnings of the art world, and the development of a Bohemian counter culture made room for experiments in painting that would have been impossible earlier.
Changes in the Role of Art and Artists in Society
Raymond Rudorff, , The belle epoque; Paris in the nineties (New York, Saturday Review Press, 1973)
F.W.J. Hemmings, “The Realists: and “Writers on the Dock” from Culture and Society in France. 1848-1898 (Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1971.), pp. 92-93, 57– 61.
Charles Baudelaire, The Alienation of the Artist
Changes in the Market for Painting
Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White, Canvases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World
- A New System Emerges
- Realities of Training
- A Glut in Search of a Market
- The Dealer-Critic System
- Individual Careers and the New System
David W. Galenson and Robert Jenson, “Canvases and Careers: The Rise of the Market for Modern Art in the Nineteenth Century,” NBER Working Paper No. 9123 September 2002 pp
New Visions of What Art Should Be
From The France of Victor Hugo
Charles Baudelaire, Selections from "On the Heroism of Modern Life" (1846)
Gustav Courbet, "Art Cannot Be Taught"
Jules Antoine Castagnary, "1863: The Triumph of Naturalism"
New Social Environments: Bohemia
Richard Miller, Bohemia: The protoculture then and now (Selections).
- Youth Culture and the Opening of Hernani (1830)
- Murger and the Creation of a Bohemian Counter Culture
Henri Murger, Preface to The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter(Paris: Société des Beaux-Arts, n.d.)
Henri Murger, The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter (Selections)
Chapter XI -- A Bohemian Cafe
Chapter XVI -- The Passage of the Red Sea (Selections)
Gustav Courbet, Bonjour Monsieur Courbet (1854)
Camille Pissaro, Avenue de l opera Place du Theatre Francais in Misty Weather (1898)
A Case Study in Change: Impressionism
Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White, Canvases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World
Raymond Rudorff, Belle Epoque (The Revolution in French Art)
Paul Smith, Impressionism and the Impressionists (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995), pp.8-15.
Jules Antoine Castagnary, "1863: The Triumph of Naturalism"
Émile Blémont. “The Impressionists” and Émile Zola, “Naturalism in the Salon” from Eugene Weber, ed., Paths to the Present: Aspects of European Thought from Romanticism to Existentialism (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1969), pp.185-186.
Robert Gildea, Children of the Revolution, Realism and Impressionism
Examples of Impressionism
Auguste Renoir Canoeist's Luncheon (1879-80)