Impressionism and la Grande Jatte Essay

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Stephanie Shaw
IWT Task 1

Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

Impressionism and Post-Impressionism are two significant periods of art that feed off of the social conditions of their time and influenced art of the future.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century Impressionism made its debut in France. The period of Impressionism started in 1874 when a group of artists known as the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers, who shared the same approaches and used different techniques, came together and exhibited their work through out Paris, France. Claude Monet’s exhibit of his landscape artwork called Impression: Soleil Levant gave the era its name.
The different styles and techniques used by these artists consisted of unblended short thin and thick strokes of a paintbrush that created a painting with sketch like appearances. This technique produced a new way for viewers to see the world. “It had opened composition and unusual visual angles and it depicted light in a changing quality as in the passage of time and included movement as a necessary element.” ( M.,Emelda, 2011) The artists used bright colors that were never shaded or muted by using black. They chose to mutate colors by using different shades of the color at use. Using these techniques together on an opaque canvas, the artists were able to capture the moment of the modern realistic scenes. Impressionist worked at a faster pace and also worked outdoors. They often traveled to seek different settings for their paintings. The beauty of the Impressionist style is that depending upon the distance from the piece you are able to appreciate two separate works of art. From afar your eyes are able to mix the colors optically to reveal the modern realistic subject that is depicted on the canvas. When you move close up to the painting, the subject becomes blurred and you are easily able to see the brush strokes and each color used to within the art piece.
During the late nineteenth century Paris went through major renovations that modernized the city for that time. Parts of the city that was destroyed during the Franco-Prussian War was reconstructed and old buildings were torn down to create more open spaces through out the city. With all the reconstruction the artists not only focused on the views of the landscape but of the people who lived within their city. The artists visited public settings and captured the people of different social classes enjoying varying forms of recreational activities such as cafés, concerts, parks, and dances. As Margaret Samu stated (2004) “Caillebotte’s 1877 Paris Street, Rainy Day exemplifies how these artists abandoned sentimental depictions and explicit narratives, adopting instead a detached, objective view that merely suggest what it going on.” With all of the change that was going on in Paris, you are easily able to see how the social conditions contributed to the advent of impressionism.
During the late nineteenth century a group of independent artists came together to take impressionism a little further. They felt as though Impressionism had too many limitations. This group of artists decided to raise the bar by incorporating a style of impressionism that allowed the artist to express emotions, capture intense themes of symbolism, along with more vivid colors used with distinct lighting and each artist using their own thoughts and emotions to create a post-impressionism master piece. The name Post Impressionism came from an artist by the name of Robert Fry. He got the name Post-Impressionist from an exhibit he had called Manet and the Post-Impressionist.
Post-Impressionist style is classified though the usage of vivid colors, thick application of the paint on the canvas, unique brush strokes, pointillism, and distinct geometric shapes and figures like cubism. Although these artists were all classified as post-Impressionist, every artist had their own individual style of painting that originated from the
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