There is an opinion that painting in impressionism does not take such an important place. But impressionism in painting is the opposite. The statement is very paradoxical and contradictory. But this is only a first, superficial glance.
Perhaps, for all the millennia of the existence in the arsenal of humanity of artistic fine art, nothing newer, revolutionary has ever appeared. Impressionism is in any modern art canvas. It can be clearly seen both in the frames of the film of the illustrious master, and among the gloss of a ladies' magazine. He penetrated music and books. But once it was all different.
The origins of impressionism
In 1901, in France, in the cave of Combarelle, cave paintings were accidentally discovered, the youngest of which was 15,000 years old. And this was the first impressionism in painting. Because the primitive artist did not set out to read morality to the viewer. He simply painted the life that surrounded him.
And then this method was forgotten for many, many years. Humanity has invented other verbal means of communication. And the transmission of emotions by a visual method ceased to be topical for him.
In some ways, the ancient Romans were close to impressionism. But part of their efforts was covered with ashes. And there, where Vesuvius did not reach, barbarians came.
The painting was preserved, but began to illustrate texts, messages, messages, knowledge. She ceased to be a feeling. She became a parable, an explanation, a story. Look at the tapestry from Bayeux. He is beautiful and priceless. But this is not a picture. This is seventy meters of linen comics.
Painting in impressionism: the beginning
Slowly and majestically painting has developed in the world for millennia. New paints and techniques appeared. Artists recognized the importance of perspective and the power of the colorful, drawn message to the human mind. Painting became an academic science and acquired all the features of monumental art. She became clumsy, stiff and moderately pathetic. At the same time honed and unshakable as a canonical religious postulate.
The source of the plots for the paintings were religious parables, literature, and staged genre scenes. The strokes were small, inconspicuous. Glaze was introduced into the rank of dogma. And the art of drawing in the foreseeable future promised to become numb, like a primeval forest.
Life changed, technology developed rapidly, and only artists continued to stamp prim portraits and smooth sketches of suburban parks. This state of affairs did not suit everyone. But the inertia of the consciousness of society was overcome with difficulty at all times.
However, in the courtyard there was already the 19th century, which had long exceeded its second half. The processes in society, which occupied before the century, now took place in front of one generation. Industry, medicine, economics, literature, society itself developed rapidly. It was then that the painting in impressionism showed itself.
Happy Birthday! Impressionism in painting: paintings
Impressionism in painting, like paintings, has an exact dating of its birth - 1863. And his birth was not without curiosities.
The center of world art then, of course, was Paris. Every year, large Parisian salons were held in it - world exhibitions and sales of paintings. The jury, which selected works for salons, was mired in petty intrigues, worthless squabbles and stubbornly focused on the senile tastes of the then academies. As a result, new, bright artists, whose talent did not correspond to ossified academic dogma, did not get into the exhibition at the exhibition. When selecting the exhibitors of the 1863 exhibition, over 60% of applications were rejected. These are thousands of painters. A scandal was brewing.
Emperor gallery owner
And the scandal erupted. The inability to exhibit deprived livelihoods and blocked access to the general public by a huge number of artists. Among them are names now known to the whole world: Monet and Mans, Renoir and Pizarro.
It is clear that this did not suit them. And there was a big buzz in the press. It got to the point that on April 22, 1863, Napoleon III visited the Paris Salon and, in addition to the exposition, purposefully examined part of the rejected works. And I did not find anything reprehensible in them. And even made this statement in the press. And therefore, in parallel with the great Paris Salon, an alternative exhibition of paintings with works rejected by the jury of the salon opened. She went down in history under the name "Exhibition of the Outcast."
So, April 22, 1863 can be considered the birthday of all modern art. An art that has become independent of literature, music, and religion. Moreover: painting itself began to dictate its terms to writers and composers, for the first time getting rid of subordinate roles.
Representatives of impressionism
When we talk about impressionism, we mean first of all impressionism in painting. Its representatives are numerous and multifaceted. It is enough to name the most famous: Degas, Renoin, Mans, Monet, Pizarro, Cezanne, Morisot, Lepic, Legra, Gauguin, Renoir, Thilo, Foren and many, many others. The Impressionists for the first time set the task to catch not just a static picture from life, but to grab a feeling, emotion, inner experience. It was an instant cut, a high-speed photograph of the inner world, the emotional world.
Hence the new contrasts and colors, hitherto not used in painting. Hence the large, bold strokes and the constant search for new forms. There is no former clarity and lickiness. The picture is blurry and fleeting, like a person’s mood. This is not a story. These are the senses visible to the eye. Look at the paintings of the impressionists. They are all a little ragged at a glance, slightly fleeting. These are not pictures. These are sketches brought to brilliant perfection.
The emergence of post-impressionism
It was the desire to bring feelings to the forefront, and not a frozen temporary fragment, that was revolutionary, innovative for that time. And then there was only one step left to post-impressionism - the flow of art, which brought to the first roles not emotion, but patterns. More precisely, the artist conveys his inner, personal reality. This is an attempt to tell not about the external world, but about the internal way of how the artist sees the world. This is a painting of perception.
Impressionism and post-impressionism in painting are very close. And the separation itself is very arbitrary. Both currents are close in time, and the authors themselves, often the same ones, as a rule, switched from one style to another quite freely.
And yet. Look at the work of the impressionists. A bit unnatural color. A world familiar to us, but at the same time a little invented. This is how the artist saw him. He does not give us nature that is contemporary to him. He just bare his soul for us a little. The soul of Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Denis, Gauguin and Sera.
Russian impressionism
The experience of impressionism, which captured the whole world, did not leave Russia aside. Meanwhile, in our country, accustomed to a more measured life, not understanding the vanity and aspirations of Paris, impressionism was not able to get rid of academicity. He is like a bird, jerked on take-off, but frozen halfway to the sky.
Impressionism in Russian painting did not receive the dynamism of the French brush. But he acquired a dressed-up semantic dominant, which made it a bright, somewhat isolated phenomenon in world art.
Impressionism is a feeling expressed in the form of a picture. He does not bring up, does not demand. He claims.
Impressionism served as the starting point for modernism and expressionism, constructivism and avant-garde. All modern art, in fact, began its report from the distant April 20, 1863. Painting in impressionism is an art born in Paris.