The artistic quest of the impressionists
It took many years for this prophecy to come true. Many talented artists united around Manet, who, like him, did not recognize official art and decided to go their own way. Among them – Claude Oscar Monet (1840-1926), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), Edgar Degas (1834-1917) and others. The Battle for the New art continued until 1886, when the last, eighth exhibition of these artists took place.
The critics, concentrating all their rage on the “indecency” of the plots, did not notice the new that was already contained in the paintings of Edouard Manet’s associates. Fresh air, bright sunlight, a joyful, happy mood of a person whose life organically merged with the rhythm of big cities and lyrical landscapes. The artists managed to convince their contemporaries that the magical effects of light and air mean much more in painting than the plot.
Unlike romantics and realists, they were no longer inclined to portray the historical past. Their sphere of interest was modernity. The life of small Parisian cafes, bustling streets, picturesque banks of the Seine, railway stations, bridges, the inconspicuous beauty of rural landscapes and small villages become the main objects of the image. Artists no longer want to touch upon acute social problems and pass judgment on social events and phenomena. Maximilian Voloshin very accurately defined the general tone of the new art:
“The birth of impressionism was as joyous as early spring. The first impressionists came out of a dark room and rejoiced in the light and colors like a child. “
Impressionism owes its name to the painting by Claude Monet Impression. Sunrise”. It captures a brief moment when a huge orange ball floats out from behind a cloud in the mid-darkness of early morning. Its crimson reflections, reflected in the river, flutter on the water surface. A gray-milky haze of fog enveloped the outlines of objects in the bay. Everything around is so unstable and unstable that it is impossible to distinguish the boundaries between the sky, the coast and the river. It seems as if many small boats are floating in a huge outer space. But in a minute, when the fog clears, everything will disappear and take on a completely different form …
The critic Louis Leroy found this title of the painting extremely amusing. He, like many others, was irritated that it was impossible to see anything on the canvas. Monet just shrugged his shoulders and said: “Pitiful blind people who want to clearly see everything through the haze.” However, soon the word “impressionism” (French impression – impression), pronounced in mockery, began to refer to the work of artists who worked in this manner.
Putting forward their own principles of perception and display of the surrounding world, they created a new pictorial language based on some general provisions and stylistic features. Impressionist artists were united by the subjective experience of light, color, shadow, reflections on the surface of objects. It was not the plot itself that became important to them, but its sensory perception, the impression that it could make on the audience. It could be a haystack illuminated by the rays of the morning or evening sun, a lilac bush that did not have time to throw off wet drops of the rain that had just passed, the uneven stone surface of a Gothic cathedral, multi-colored shadows from objects at noon, the movement of a crowd scurrying along the street.
In the work of impressionist painters, the mobility and variability of the world become the main goal of the image. With the help of light, they try to capture a “fleeting vision”, instant impressions and sensations from the elusive world. The desire to capture the ever-changing face of nature required the artists to act quickly. They had no time to select and mix paints on a palette. Unlike the old masters, they applied them to the canvas with quick strokes, caring not about drawing details or clarity of the drawing, but only about the overall impression of what they saw. They did not take seriously accusations of incompleteness and sketchiness of the pictures.
Impressionist painters came out of dark workshops to the open air (fr. Plein air – free air). Their main discovery was that in the open air, a person sees not specific objects, but a kind of mixture of colored dots merging in our consciousness and vision. Claude Monet’s small boat was turned into an artist’s studio, from here he observed the peculiarities and variability of the river landscape. Edouard Manet, who once visited the artist and was convinced of the correctness of the chosen method, captured him at work on a boat. Painting in the open air became one of the most important rules of the Impressionists. Renoir noted the features of such a painting:
“I wrote in Brittany in the autumn, under the shade of chestnuts. All the tones that I put on the canvas – black or blue – were great. But this golden transparency of the foliage created a picture; as soon as it got into the workshop, under normal lighting conditions, it turned out to be worthless. “
The only exception was Edgar Degas, who continued to paint in his workshop.
The impressionist painters reached particular heights in the transmission of light and color. They took into account the laws of color perception at a distance, never mixed colors on the palette. Many of them seriously studied the latest scientific discoveries in the field of optics, the nature of light waves and the components of each color. For example, in the work of the chemist E. Chevreul “Principles of harmony and contrast of colors as applied to art”, it was proved that the adjacent colors of the spectrum (red – green, blue – orange, purple – yellow) influence each other. When they are near, they intensify, when mixed, they fade. Any color placed on white is perceived as surrounded by a slight halo of additional color. Renoir emphasized:
“The artist’s palette does not matter, because the eye is the creator of everything … It all depends on what I put around this paint.”
That is why, in Impressionist paintings, the sky could turn green and the grass blue. Monet, followed by Pissarro and Seurat, were the first in the history of painting to paint grass in the shade with cobalt blue, and in the sun with golden ocher. Sisley rendered the sunlight in pink tones. The artists argued that the color of the shadow depends on the surrounding colors, and therefore it can also shimmer in a thousand shades. For its image, you can completely do without the usual black and gray tones.
The impressionist painters gave particular preference to the light tones of the solar spectrum. Many of them abandoned black altogether, considering it impossible to make it play with different shades. Only Edouard Manet preferred black to all others.
The technique of pastel (French pastel) – painting with colored pencils or colorful powder – opened up huge possibilities in the use of color. Edgar Degas was especially fond of working there. The texture of pastels is velvety, it is able to convey the vibration of a color that seems to be glowing from the inside.
In Blue Dancers, the pastel technique is used to enhance the decorativeness and color tone of the composition. A sheaf of bright light that floods the picture helps to create a special, festive atmosphere of ballet dance. One gets the impression that light here completely replaces the drawing, it organizes, leads to a single sounding a complex symphony of colors. In bright blue tutus, with flowers in their hair, the dancers seem to be beautiful fairy fairies participating in a magical extravaganza.
Interesting finds were made by the Impressionists in the technique of light transmission. Shimmering in countless gradations, the light is varied in intensity, purity and transparency. It depends not only on the place, but also on the time, which changes the ratio of colors, and sometimes the essence of the depicted objects. With the help of light, you can convey the variability and transience of life. Contrasts become sharper in sunlight. The protruding parts of objects are perceived as brighter. The Impressionists found that in the open air and in bright sunlight, deep shadows disappear.
Depending on the lighting, the same motive can be conveyed in different ways. Thus, Claude Monet introduced into practice the creation of a series of paintings under different lighting conditions (“Gare Saint-Lazare”, “Haystack at Giverny”, “Water Lilies”, “Rouen Cathedral”). Wanting to capture the uniqueness of the sound of colors in a short period of time, Monet wrote his series with one chosen type of nature.
The painting “Haystack at Giverny” reproduces a shining summer afternoon and a mown meadow drenched in the sun. Clouds running across the sky give deep shadows in the foreground. A slender row of poplars, the green forest behind the meadow are immersed in a blue veil. For a moment, the haystack was submerged in the shadow. From this, he acquired completely unexpected lilac and lilac-pink tones. The shadow in the meadow shimmers with many colors, in which green still wins. The far part of the meadow, under the sun, rings with a bright yellow color. Separate strokes of pure colors, merging in the viewer’s perception, convey the instantaneousness of the captured state of nature.
Auguste Renoir was a true magician of light. See how light is conveyed in the painting “The Swing”. The glare of the sun, penetrating through the leaves fluttering in the wind, determines the relationship of light and shadow. Glare of light enliven the image, set it in motion. Shadows fall in spots on clothes, faces, tree trunks, a path with colored highlights …
Speaking about the work of the Impressionists, one cannot fail to note their search for new compositional solutions. These artists revamped the principles of construction in many ways, abandoning the academic demands of immobility, symmetry, order and clarity. Their works are distinguished by a lively and moving composition that does not require strict observance of the laws of linear perspective, in which there is no center or common core. Renoir wrote:
“I love pictures that make me want to walk into the depths of them, if it’s a landscape, or touch my chest or back, if it’s a picture of a woman.”
The artist can boldly frame the figures of people standing on the balcony (Monet’s Boulevard des Capucines in Paris), create the illusion of an endless water space, not limited by either the shores or the horizon (Monet’s Water Lilies), interrupt a fun open-air ball in a Montmartre tavern (Renoir “Ball at the Moulin de la Galette”),
Long before the opening of cinema, the artist Edgar Degas successfully used the techniques of the future cinema – division into frames, zooming in on the camera, showing fragments. He expounded his artistic principles as follows:
“Always cut [frame] the figure; show only the dancer’s arms or legs or hips; show her shoes; show the hands of the hairdresser … Sitting at the very feet of the dancer, I would see her head surrounded by chandelier pendants. “
In the image of numerous races, Degas cuts off an empty field with a frame, a carriage with a rider in the foreground, figures of men in black top hats and ladies under umbrellas. The artist’s canvases depict “life taken by surprise”.
Engravings by Japanese masters and their understanding of the laws of perspective had a particular influence on the art of the Impressionists. Interestingly, for Japanese artists, the vanishing point of perspective is usually taken out of the picture. All objects were depicted in an angle unusual for Europeans, from somewhere above or from a far corner. Degas very quickly picked up these discoveries by Japanese artists. In his works, the figures of ballerinas, located far away, and the bows of an invisible orchestra, and the theater curtain can act equally.
Degas’ painting “Absinthe” captures an unremarkable scene in a cafe. A man and a woman are sitting at a table next to each other. Strangers to each other, they look in different directions. Each of them is immersed in their own thoughts. In front of the woman is a drink in a glass. The man has an absent-minded look, the hat is carelessly pushed to the back of the head. The artist conveys the feeling of “woeful loneliness together” thanks to an interesting compositional solution. We see the heroes from a distance, through the empty tables, depicted in the foreground of the picture. The emptiness of the foreground was deliberately emphasized, all details and unnecessary objects that could distract the attention of the audience were removed. The interior, designed in a cold, gray-blue range, only enhances the impression of loneliness and melancholy.
