Chapter 29 The Rise of Modernism: Art of the Later 19th Century Notes

The first Industrial Revolution centered on textiles, steam, and iron, spread throughout Europe and the United States. These changes led to what some have called a second Industrial Revolution that was associated with steel, electricity, chemicals, and oil. These discoveries provided the foundations for developments in plastics, machinery, building construction, and automobile manufacturing, which paved the way for the invention of the radio, electric light, telephone, and electric streetcar. One of the significant consequences of industrialization was urbanization. The number and size of Western cities grew dramatically during the later part of the 19th century, largely due to migration from rural areas. Small farms were squeezed out by larger operations, and the new work opportunities in the cities, especially factories, were the major factors in the migration. Advances in industrial technology reinforced the Enlightenments foundation of rationalism. Increasingly people embraced empiricism (the search for knowledge based on observation and direct experience). The wide spread faith in science grew the Western philosophy called positivism, that promoted science as the minds highest achievement. Positivism was developed by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who advocated a purely scientific, empirical approach to nature and society. Charles Darwin (1809-1882), was the English naturalist whose theory of natural selection was the foundation of the concept of evolution. Evolution is based on mechanistic laws rather than other possibilities. By challenging Christian beliefs, Darwinism contributed to the growing secular attitude and was gravitated to by those who wanted to explain away the possibility of God. The British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) applied Darwins theories to the rapidly changing socioeconomic realm. He asserted, as in the biological world, that there was a survival of the most economically fit. This logic was used to justify rampant Western racism, imperialism, nationalism, and militarism that marked the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Social Darwinism was a theory that perceived that such conflict and struggle as inevitable. The Concept of conflict was central to the ideas of German Karl Marx (1818-1883). Along with fellow German Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848. It called for the working class to overthrow the capitalist system. Economic forces based on class struggle induced historical change. Those who controlled the means of production conflicted with those whose labor was exploited to benefit the wealthy and powerful. This dynamic was called dialectical materialism. Marxs goal was the seizure of power by the working class and the destruction of capitalism. Marxism, which held great appeal for the oppressed as well as may intellectuals, emphasized class conflict and was instrumental in the rise of trade unions and socialist groups. Industrialism required a wide variety of natural resources and social Darwinists easily translated their intrinsic concept of social hierarchy into racial and national hierarchies. This provided

Western leaders with justification for the colonization of peoples and cultures that they deemed less advanced. By 1900 the French had colonized most of North Africa and Indochina, while the British occupied India, Australia, and large areas of Africa, including Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan, Rhodesia, and the Union of South Africa. The Dutch were a major presence in the Pacific, and the Germans, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italians all established themselves in various areas of Africa. The Development of Modernism The rapid changes of modern life led to an acute awareness of the lack of permanence in the world. This prompted a greater sense and interest in being modern. What is considered modern permeated the Western art world resulting in the development of modernism. Modernist arts critical function differentiates it from Modern Art. Modern art, as discussed in Chapter 28, refers to art of the past few centuries. Modernism developed in the second half of the 19th century and is modern in that modern artist, then and now, often seeks to capture images and sensibilities of their age. However, modernism goes beyond simply dealing with the present and involves the artists critical examination of or reflection on the premise of art itself. Modernism implies certain concerns about art and aesthetics that are internal to art production. Clement Greenberg, the 20th century American art critic, explained that Realistic, illusionistic art had disassembled the medium, using art to conceal art. Modernism used art to call attention to art... The construction of painting was viewed as a negative by the Old Masters, something to be concealed (Renaissance illusionism). Modernist painting has regarded these negatives as positives to be acknowledged openly. The aggressiveness of modernism led to the development of the avant-garde or cutting edge. These were artists whose work rejected the past and transgressed the boundaries of artistic practice. The subversive dimension of the avant-garde was in sync with the anarchic, revolutionary sociopolitical tendencies in Europe at the time. Realism: The Painting of Modern Life Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was the leading figure of the Realist movement that began in France around the mid 19th century. Realism provided viewers with a reevaluation of reality. Realist artists argued that only things of ones own time, what people can see for themselves, are real. Realists focused on contemporary life and not things of the past or fictional subjects. Thus, Realists portrayed the things that had been previously deemed unworthy; the mundane and trivial, working class laborers and peasants. They portrayed their subjects on the scale previously reserved for grand history painting. The Stone Breakers, 1848, by Courbet, captures on canvas in a straightforward manner two men in the act of breaking stones, traditionally the lot of the lowest in French society. Their labor is neither romanticized nor idealized, but is shown with directness and accuracy. His palettes dirty browns and grays convey the dreary and dismal nature of the task. The angular positioning of the older stone breaker on the right suggests a mechanical monotony.

This interest in the laboring poor as subject matter had special meaning for the mid 19th century French audience. In 1848, workers rebelled against the bourgeois leaders of the newly formed Second Republic and against the rest of the nation, demanding better working conditions and a redistribution of property. The army quelled the revolution in three days but not without much loss of life and long lasting trauma. The issue of labor as a national concern was placed in the forefront both literally and symbolically. Burial at Ornans, 1849, depicts a funeral in a bleak provincial landscape, attended by common people. Although the painting has the monumental scale of traditional history painting, the subjects ordinariness and antiheroic composition horrified the critics. The heroic, the sublime, and the dramatic, are not shown here - only the mundane realities of daily life and death. Unlike the theatricality of Romanticism, Realism captured the ordinary rhythms of contemporaneous life. Realism was viewed as the first modernist movement by many scholars and critics. Accordingly, Realists called attention to painting as a pictorial construction by their pigment application and by or composition manipulation. Courbets intentionally simple and direct methods of expression in composition and technique seemed unbearably crude to many of his more traditional contemporaries, and he was called a primitive. Courbet often used his palette knife for quickly placing and unifying large daubs of paint, producing roughly wrought surfaces. His example inspired the young artists who worked for him, and later Impressionists such as Monet and Renoir. But the public accused him of carelessness and the critics wrote of his brutalities. The style and content of Courbets paintings were not well received. The jury selecting work for the 1855 Salon, rejected two of his paintings on the grounds that his subjects and figures were too coarsely depicted (so much as to be plainly socialistic) and too large. In response Courbet set up his own exhibition outside the grounds, calling it the Pavilion of Realism. The pavilion displayed statements that amounted to the new movements manifestos. Like Courbet, Jean Franois Millet (1814-1878) found his subjects in the people and occupations of the everyday world. Millet was one of a group of French painters of country life, who, to be close to their rural subjects, settled near the village of Barbizon in the forest of Fontainebleau. The Barbizon school, as they were called, specialized in detailed pictures of forest and countryside. Millet, perhaps their most prominent member, was of peasant stock and identified with the hard lot of the country poor. In The Gleaners, 1857, he depicted three peasant women performing the backbreaking task of gleaning the last wheat scraps. These women were the lowest level of peasant society. Such impoverished people were allowed to pick up the gleaning after the harvest. This practice was described in the Old Testament book of Ruth. Millet characteristically placed his monumental figures in the foreground against a broad sky. Although Millets works have sentimentality absent from those of Courbet, the French public reacted to his paintings with disdain and suspicion, after the Revolution of 1848. Investing the

poor with solemn grandeur did not meet with the approval of the prosperous classes. In particular the middle class landowners resisted granting the traditional gleaning rights. The relatively dignified depictions of gleaning did not sit well with them. Further, the middle class linked the poor with the dangerous, newly defined working class, which was finding outspoken champions in men, such as, Marx, Engels, Emile Zola, and Charles Dickens. Socialism's growing popularity scared the bourgeoisie. Millets sympathetic depiction of the poor seemed to many like a political manifesto. Because of the power of art, France and the rest of Europe in the later 18th and early 19th centuries prompted the French people to suspect artists as subversive. A person could be jailed for too bold of a statement in the press, literature, art, music, or drama. Realist, Honore Daumier (1808-1879), was a defender of the urban working classes, and in his art, he boldly confronted authority with social criticism and political protest. In response, the authorities imprisoned the artist. His lithographic prints enabled him to reach a broad audience. His in depth knowledge of the unrest in the Paris Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, endowed his work with truthfulness, which had great impact. Rue Transonain is a lithograph, whose title refers to a street in Lyon where an unknown sniper killed a civil guard, part of a government force trying to repress a worker demonstration. Because the fatal shot had come from a workers housing block, the remaining guards stormed the building and massacred all of its inhabitants. Daumier depicted not the execution but the terrible quiet of the aftermath. This print significance is in it factualness. It is an example of the periods increasing artistic bias toward using facts as subject, and not always illusionistically. The relative speed of the print medium, compared to a traditional painting, allowed Daumier to comment on current events in a timely manner. The lithograph, Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art, 1862, is an amusing witty commentary about the ongoing struggle of Photography to be recognized as a fine art. This print was prompted by an 1862 court decision that acknowledged that photography was indeed an art, and therefore entitled to legal protection. The suit that was brought, involved copyright infringement, which only applied to recognized art forms at the time. Daumier brought the same convictions he displayed in his graphic arts, to his painting. His unfinished painting Third Class Carriage depicts the cramped and dirty space that the poor were forced to travel in on railway carriages. First and third class were closed compartments, while third class was cramped and on hard benches. The disinherited masses of the 19th century were repeatedly Daumiers subjects. He tried to achieve the real by isolating a random collection of the unrehearsed details of human existence from the continuum of ordinary life. Daumiers vision anticipated the spontaneity and candor of scenes captured with the modern snapshot camera by the end of the century. Edouard Manet (1832-1883) was committed to Realist ideas and was instrumental in affecting the course of Modernist painting. Manet was a pivotal figure in the 19th century. Not only was his work critical for the articulation of Realist principles, but his art played an important role in the development of Impressionism in the 1870s. When attempting to explain the critique of the

discipline central to modernism, art historians have looked to Manets paintings as prime examples. Manets interest in modernist principles is clear in his Dejeuner sur lHerbe, or Luncheon on the Grass. Manet depicts two nude women and two clothed men enjoying a picnic. The foreground figures were all based on living identifiable people. The seated nude is Victorine Meurend (Manets favorite model at the time) and the gentleman with the cane is his brother Eugene, and the other is the sculptor Ferdinand Leenhof. The two men are dressed in fashionable Parisian attire of the 1860s. The foreground nude is not only a distressingly unidealized figure type, but also seems disturbingly unabashed and at ease, looking directly to the viewer without shame. This outraged the public - rather than a traditional pastoral scene, Luncheon seemed merely to represent the promiscuous in a Parisian park. Shock value was not the aim of Manet even though he anticipated the criticism. Manets goal was a reassessment of the entire range of art. Luncheon contains many references to painting genres - history painting, portraiture, pastoral scenes, nudes, and even religious scenes. It represents a synthesis of the history of painting. The negative response to Manets painting extended beyond the subject. Manet depicted the figures in a soft focus and broadly painted the landscape including the pool in which the second woman bathes. The loose manner of the painting contrasts with the clear forms of the harshly lit foreground trio and the pile of discarded attire and picnic foods. In the main figures, the many values that create form are simplified into one or two, lights or darks. The effect is to flatten the forms and create hardness about them. Form is the function of light and not line. Manet was using art to call attention to art. He was moving from illusionism toward open acknowledgment of the flatness of the painting surface. The public, however, saw only a crude sketch without the customary finish. The style of painting and the subject matter made this work exceptionally controversial. Even more scandalous was Manets 1863 painting Olympia. The work depicts a young prostitute, reclining on a bed that fills the foreground. Stark naked, except a few accessories, Olympia, which was the professional name for prostitutes in the 19th century, coolly looks into the viewers eyes. The black maid in the foreground presents her flowers. The public and critics were greatly outraged at Manets in your face and defiant portrayal of a prostitute. The painting touches on racial issues, depravity and animalistic sexuality. The rough painting style and abrupt tonality changes that contrasted with the publics academic tastes. To better understand the publics rejection of Manet and modernism we need to look at the the work of a highly acclaimed French academic artist of the time Adolphe-William Bouguereau (1825-1905), is instructive. Nymphs and Satyr depicts a classical mythological subject with a polished illusionism. Although the scene appears very illusionistic, it is defiantly not Realist. His choice of a fictional theme and adherence to established painting conventions could be only

seen as traditional. Bouguereau was immensely popular during the later 19th century, enjoying state patronage throughout his career. Marie Rosalie (Rosa) Bonheur (1822-1899) was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1865, and was the most celebrated women artist of the 19th century. Although Bonheurs work contains Realist elements, she would more appropriately consider a naturalist. She was trained as an artist by her father, who was a proponent of Saint-Simonianism, an early 19th century utopian socialist movement that emphasized, among other things, the education and enfranchisement of women. Bonheur launched her career believing that as a women and artist, she had a special role to play in creating a new and perfect society. She was driven by a Realist passion for accuracy, but resisted depicting problematic social and political situations that Courbet and Manet embraced. Rather she turned to the animal world, combining a scientists knowledge of equine anatomy with the love and admiration for the brute strength of wild and domestic animals. The Horse Fair, is Bonheurs most famous work. Panoramic and dynamic, the loose painterly brushwork and rolling sky reveal her admiration for Gericault. Many engraved reproductions of the work were eagerly bought, making it one of the most well known paintings of the century. Despite the publics derision, the French Realists challenged the whole iconographic stock of traditional art and called public attention to what Baudelaire termed the heroism of modern life. In doing so they not only changed the course of Western art but also left succeeding generations of viewers with a broader understanding of French life and culture in the later 19th century. American Realism Depicting scenes of modern life was not exclusively French. The Realist foundation in empiricism and positivism appealed to many artists in other countries. Winslow Homer (18361910) had first hand knowledge of the Civil War. When it broke out in 1860, he joined the Union campaign as an artist reporter for Harpers Weekly. At the end of the war, in 1865, he painted The Veteran in a New Field. Although it is painted simple and direct, it provides significant commentary on the effects and aftermath of the Civil War. A man is depicted with his back to the viewer harvesting wheat. That he is a veteran is clear not only from the title of the painting, but also from the uniform and canteen on the ground in the lower right. The veterans involvement in meaningful and productive work implies a smooth transition from war to peace. Americas ability to make a smooth transition from soldier to farmer, was a national concern, but became strength. The poet Walt Whitman wrote, The peaceful harmonious disbanding of the armies in the summer of 1865 was one of the immortal proofs of democracy, unequalld in all the history of the past. Homers painting thus reinforced the perception of the countrys greatness. Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) was a master Realist portrait and Genre painter living in Philadelphia. He studied both painting and anatomy there before undertaking study under the French artist Gerome. Eakins ambition was to paint things as he saw them rather than as the

public might wish them portrayed. This attitude was in line with the 19th century American taste for accurate depictions with a hunger for truth. The too brutal realism of The Gross Clinic, an early Eakins masterpiece, prompted a jury to reject it for the Philadelphia exhibition commemorating the nations centennial. The work presents the renowned surgeon Dr. Samuel Gross in the operating amphitheater of the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, where the painting now hangs. The subject testifies to the publics increasing faith in science and medicine. The figures in the composition have been identified, everything is up to date. The graphic scene was had to digest. Its unsparing description of a contemporaneous event, was more than most could take. One critic wrote, It is a picture that even strong men find difficult to look at long, if they can look at all. Eakins believed that knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, was a prerequisite for his art. This insistence on scientific fact corresponded to the dominance of empiricism during the latter half of the 19th century. Eakins concerns for anatomical correctness led him to investigate the human form in motion. Using regular cameras and a special one from France, Eakins collaborated with Eadweard Muybridge in the photographic study of animal and human action. These studies drew favorable attention from artists at home and abroad, and anticipated the motion picture. Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) was a Realistic photographer and scientist who came to America from England in the 1850s and settled in San Francisco. He established a prominent international reputation for his photographs of the Western United States; winning the gold medal at the Vienna Exposition in 1873 for his large plate landscape images of Yosemite. In 1872, the governor of California sought Muybridge's assistance in settling a bet about whether, at any point in a stride, all four feet of a horse galloping at top speed are off the ground. Through his sequential photography, as seen in Horse Galloping, Muybridge proved that they were. Muybridge did other studies in motion that was too quick for the human eye to capture. Muybridge received extensive publicity for his discoveries which he published in a book Animal Locomotion. His studies influenced contemporaries such as Degas, and Frederick Remington. Muybridge presented his work to scientists and general audiences with a device called the zoopraxiscope, which he invented to project his sequences of images, mounted on special plates, onto a screen. The result was so life like that on viewer said it threw upon the screen apparently the living, moving animals. Nothing was wanting but the clatter of hoofs upon the turf. The illusion of motion was created by a physical fact of human insight called persistence of vision. The brain holds what ever the eyes see a fraction of a second after the eye stops seeing it. Thus, viewers saw a rapid succession of different images merging one into the next, producing the illusion of continuous change. This illusion of continuous change lies at the heart of the realism of all cinemas. John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was an expatriate American artist and a younger contemporary of Eakins and Muybridge. Sargents style was looser and more dashing than that

of Eakins. Sargent was in great demand as a portrait painter for the rich and elite of society. He was renowned as a cultivated and cosmopolitan gentleman. He learned his fluid painting style from study of Velazquez, whose masterpiece Las Meninas may have influenced Sargents family portrait The Daughters of Edward Daily Boit. The four girls were the children of one of Sargents close friends. Here, they are depicted in a hall and small drawing room in their Paris home. The informal eclectic arrangements of their slight figures suggest that they are at ease in a familiar space. He sensitively captured the naive, wondering openness of the little girl in the foreground, the grave artlessness of the 10 year old child, and the self conscious poise of the adolescents. This seems to be a spontaneous moment as if an adult had asked them to look this way. Here is a most effective embodiment of the Realist belief that the artists business is to record the modern being in a modern context. Henry Ossawa Turner (1859-1937) was a black American artist who was a Realist painter depicting the lives of ordinary people. Tanner studied art with Eakins before moving to Paris. There he combined Eakins belief in careful study from nature with a desire to portray with dignity the life of the ordinary people he had been raised among as the son of an African American minister in Pennsylvania. The mood in The Thankful Poor is one of quiet devotion similar to that of Millet. The grandfather, grandson, and main objects in the room are painted in the greatest detail, while everything else dissolves into loose strokes of color and light. Expressive lighting reinforces the paintings reverent spirit. The deep shadows intensify the mans devout concentration, with golden rays illuminating the thanksgiving on the younger face. Religious sanctity expressed in terms of everyday experience became increasingly important for Tanner. A few years after our painting was completed, he began painting Biblical subjects grounded in direct study from nature and in the love of Rembrandt. Over time, Realist artists throughout Europe and America expanded and diversified their subjects to embrace all classes, levels of society, all types of peoples and environments. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood In England, John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was a founder of a group of artists, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who refused to be limited to the contemporary scenes strict Realists portrayed; these artists chose instead to represent fictional, historical, and fanciful subjects with a significant degree of convincing illusion. Millais was so obsessed with details that Baudelaire called him the poet of meticulous detail. The Brotherhood wished to create a fresh and sincere art, free from what its members considered the tired and artificial manner propagated in the academies by the successors of Raphael. Influenced by the well known critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), the Pre-Raphaelites agreed with his distaste for the materialism and ugliness of the contemporary industrializing world. The Pre-Raphaelites also expressed appreciation for the spirituality, idealism art, and artisanship of past times, especially the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance. Ophelia was exhibited in the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855, where Courbet set up his Pavilion of Realism. The subject, from Shakespeares Hamlet, is the drowning of Ophelia, who in her madness, is unaware of her plight. Although the scene is fictitious, Millais worked

diligently to present it with unswerving fidelity to visual fact. He painted the background on sight at a spot along the Hogsmill River in Surrey. For the figure, Millais had a friend lie in a heated bathtub full of waters for hours at a stretch. As a result of this meticulous detail, Ophelia was a huge success when it was exhibited. Daniel Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) was well known as a painter and poet and was another founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He also focused on literary and Biblical themes, producing many portraits of women that projected an image of ethereal beauty and melded apparent opposites - a Victorian prettiness with sensual allure. Beata Beatrix is a portrait of Beatrice from Dantes Vita Nuova - as she overlooks Florence in a trance after being transported mystically from earth to heaven. The portrait had personal resonance for Rossetti; it served as a memorial to his wife, Elizabeth Siddal (who was the model for Millaiss Ophelia). Siddal had died shortly before Rossetti began this painting in 1862. In the image, the female (Siddal-Beatrice) sits in a trancelike state, while a red dove (a messenger of both love and death), deposits a poppy ( a symbol of sleep and death) in her hands. Because Siddal died of an opium overdose, the presence of the poppy assumes greater significance.

Pictorial Photography Photography was a medium created to serve the taste for visual fact, and was it self the creator of a new Realism. But it could also be manipulated by talented photographers to produce quite Romantic effects. After the first great breakthroughs, which bluntly showed what was before the eye, photographers imitated Romantic arrangements of nature, filtering natural appearance through sentiment - by using a soft focus. In the later 19th century, with much public approval, photography had a Romantic-Realist school of its own, known as the pictorial method. Gertrude Kasebier (1852-1934) was one of the leading practitioners of the pictorial style in photography. After raising a family and working as a portrait painter, she took up photography in 1897. She became famous for photographs with symbolic themes. Blessed Art Thou Among Women depicts the famous annunciation theme. Kasebiers title suggests a parallel between the Mary and the modern mother in the image, who both protects and sends forth her daughter. This photograph is an example of Kasebier's ability to invest scenes from everyday life with a sense of spiritual and divine.

Impressionism
Impressionism, both in content and style, was an art of industrialized, urbanized Paris. As, such, it furthered some of the Realists concerns and was resolutely an art of its time. Whereas, Realism focused on the present, Impressionism focused even more acutely on a single moment. Although Impressionism is often discussed as a coherent movement, it was actually a nebulous and shifting phenomenon. People have perceived the Impressionists as a group largely because they exhibited together in the 1870s and 1880s. However, participation in these shows was a constant source of contention and debate among artists. A hostile critic applied the label impressionism in response to the painting

Impression: Sunrise by Claude Monet (1840-1926) that was exhibited in the first Impressionist show in 1874. Although the critic intended the term to be derogatory, by the third Impressionist show in 1878 the artists themselves were using the label. The term impressionism had been used in art before but in relation to sketches. Impressionist paintings incorporate the qualities of sketches - abbreviation, speed, and spontaneity. This is apparent in Impressionist: Sunrise. The brushstrokes are clearly evident. Monet made no attempt to blend the pigment to create smooth tonal gradations and an optically accurate scene. This concern with acknowledging the paint and the canvas surface continued the modernist exploration that the Realists began. Impressionism operates at the intersection of what artists saw and what they felt. The impressions that these artists recorded in their paintings were neither purely objective descriptions of the exterior world nor sorely subjective responses, but the interaction between the two. They were sensations - the artists subjective and personal responses to nature. A The lack of pristine clarity characteristic of most impressionist works is historically grounded. The extensive industrialization and urbanization that occurred in France during the later half of the 19th century can only be described as a brutal and chaotic transformation. The rapidity of these changes made the world seem unstable and insubstantial. Baudelaire observed: Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, and the contingent. Impressionist works represent an attempt to capture a fleeting moment - not in the absolutely fixed, precise sense of a Realist painting but by conveying the elusiveness and impermanence of images and conditions. Most of the Impressionists depicted scenes in and around Paris, where industrialization and urbanization had its greatest impact. Monets Saint-Lazare Train Station depicts a dominant aspect of Parisian life. The expanding railway network had made travel more convenient, bringing throngs of people into Paris. Saint-Lazare was centrally located in a busy part of Paris. Monets strokes captured the areas energy and vitality. The agitated paint application captures the atmosphere of urban life. Gustave Caillebotte (1849-1877) depicted the spacious boulevards of Paris, that were the result of the tearing down and rebuilding parts of Paris as part of the Emperor Napoleon IIIs plan to handle the close to 1.5 million population of the city and make an imperial statement. This massive project was overseen by Baron Georges Hausmann, and involved tearing down of many ancient buildings from medieval times, placing new water and sewer systems, street lighting, and of course residential and commercial buildings. The greatly widened and opened boulevards were a major component of the grand design. This whole process was known as Hausmannization. The painting, Paris: A Rainy Day, depicts the citys rapid urbanization. Caillebotte did not dissolve his image into broken color and brushwork, as did the Impressionists, but he did use their compositional sensibilities asymmetrical composition and informal balance. The arbitrary cropping of the figures conveys a random and transitory nature to this scene, a major characteristic of Modernism. Many of the Impressionists were familiar with photography and there are notable parallels between their paintings and photographs. The arbitrary cropping of figures, an often flattened

spatial effect, and the capturing of a fleeting moment are some of the parallels. The Point Neuf, Paris, a photograph created by a twin lensed camera by Hippolyte Jouvin, illustrates these points. Another facet of industrialized Paris was increased leisure time and activities due to the regimentation of schedules made possible by the advent of set working hours. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) captures this celebration of leisure in his painting, La Moulin de la Galette. The casual, fleeting moment, clearly depicted here was a major characteristic of Impressionism and modernity. Whereas classical art sought to express universal and timeless qualities, Impressionism attempted to depict just the opposite--the incidental, momentary, and passing aspects of reality. A Bar at Folies-Bergere was painted in 1882 by Manet. The viewer is confronted by disinterested, lost in thought, barmaid. Manets painterly brush strokes draw attention to the surface of the painting (it is not an illusion of reality). Forcing further study, Manet gets the viewer to see that all things in the mirror is not as it appears to be. Can you see what does not align with reality? Is the women on the right the barmaids reflection or some one else? If it is the barmaid, it is impossible to reconcile the spatial relationship between the barmaid, the mirror, and the bars frontal horizontality. These visual contradictions reveal Manets insistence on calling attention to the pictorial structure of this painting, in keeping with Manets modernist interest in examining the basic premises of the medium. This radical break with tradition and redefinition of the function of the picture surface is why many scholars call Manet the first modernist. In Edgar Degas (1834-1917) painting Ballet Rehearsal, created in 1874, he portrays one of his favorite subjects, classical ballet. Degas was one of the greatest compositional artists of all time, by his incredible arrangement of space. In this work we see major characteristics of modernism; Off-center, asymmetrical, arbitrary cropping of figures or objects, warming up for rehearsal (not the big show itself), flatness of space, and painterly. Degas studied photography and used it to make preliminary studies of the figures in interior spaces. Degas work also shows the influence of the compositional sensibilities of Japanese prints. The Impressionists greatly admired these prints for their spatial organization, familiar and intimate themes, and flat unmodeled color areas. The Impressionists were also interested in the outdoors. Monets interests began to sharply focus on the roles light and color play in capturing an instantaneous representation of atmosphere and climate. Monet carried the systematic investigation of light and color the furthest. Scientific studies of light and the invention of chemically synthesized pigments increased artists sensitivity to the multiplicity of colors in nature and gave them new colors to work. Impressionists concluded that local color is usually modified by the quality of light in which it is seen, by reflections from other objects and by effects juxtaposed colors produce. Shadows do not appear gray of black, as many earlier painters had thought, but seen to be composed of

colors modified by reflections or other conditions. The juxtaposition of colors on a canvas for an eye to fuse at a distance produces a more intense hue than the same colors mixed on a palette. The Impressionists achieved brilliant effects with their short choppy stokes that accurately caught the vibrating quality of light. The fact that their canvas surfaces look unintelligible at close range and their forms and objects appear only when the eye fuses the strokes at a certain distance, is accounts for much of the early criticism leveled at their work. These investigations into light and color are clearly seen in Monets series of Rouen Cathedral and Hay Stacks. Color and light were not the only formal elements being investigated. Degas was a master of line. His works are very different from Monet and Renoir. Degas specialized in studies of figures in rapid and informal action, recording the quick impression of arrested motion. He often uses lines to convey this sense of movement. In The Tub, Degas outlined the major objects in the painting and covered all surfaces with linear hatch marks. Degas achieved this with pastel, (Degas favorite medium) dry sticks of powdered pigment. Pastels are applied directly to paper accounting for the linear quality. They can be smudged but often retain their density and brightness. In this work, what qualities tell us that this is drawing displays modern sensibilities. (Intimate scene, acknowledged picture plane, observed difficulties [lack of foreshortening on picture, shared edges of the pictures], flattened picture plane). Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was an American expatriate. In the Salon of 1874, Degas admiring one of her paintings was said to have exclaimed There is someone who feels as I do. Degas befriended and influenced Cassatt. Being a woman, she was not allowed to frequent the cafes and other haunts of her male artist friends. She also had to care for her aging parents who moved to Paris. This limited her subject matter, which were mainly women and children. Her significance is due to her being a woman, who she hung out with, and an intimate understanding of her subject. Henri-de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) was similar to the Impressionists in their depiction of modern life, but his work was often edgier, darker, and satirical to the point of caricature. Lautrecs work was an expression of his life. He was a small, ugly, dwarf of a man, who inhabited the night world of Paris. The influence of Degas, Japanese prints, and photography can be clearly seen in Lautrecs works. Asymmetrical compositions, strong and noticeable formal elements, such as, line and color, and dissonant use of color, characterize his work. At the Moulin Rouge is exemplary of Lautrec's style. The expressive linear qualities, distortion, and artificial color anticipated Expressionism, when the artists use of the formal elements, increased their images impact on observers. James Abbott McNeill Whistler ((1834-1903) was an American expatriate who worked in Europe before settling in London. In Paris, Whistler knew the Impressionists and shared many of their modern concerns. He also was interested in creating harmonies paralleling those in music. To underscore his intentions, Whistler began naming his paintings arrangements or nocturnes. Nocturne in Black and Gold (The Falling Rocket) is a daring painting with gold flecks and splatters that represent exploding fireworks in the night sky. Whistler was more interested in conveying atmospheric effects than he was providing details of the actual scene.

Creating harmonious arrangements of shapes and colors on a rectangular canvas was an approach the interested many 20th century artists. Works such as this angered many viewers and critics. One critic, the famous John Ruskin was sued by Whistler for libel because he wrote that Whistler was slinging a pot of paint in the publics face. Whistler won the case but was awarded one penny and ordered to pay court costs, bankrupting him. He continued to produce work for the next 20 years.

Post-Impressionism
By 1886, the public and critics had accepted Impressionism. At this time, some of the Impressionists and younger followers came to feel that the Impressionists were neglecting too many of the traditional elements of picture making in their attempts to capture momentary sensations of light and color on canvas. In 1883, Renoir commented that he had, Wrung Impressionism dry, and I finally came to the conclusion that I knew neither how to paint nor how to draw. In a word Impressionism was a blind alley, as far as I was concerned. By the 1880s, four artists, in particular, began to systematically examine the properties and expressive qualities of line, pattern, form, and color: Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Paul Cezanne. Van Gogh and Gauguin focused on the expressive capabilities of the formal elements, while Seurat and Cezanne focused on more analytical concerns. Because these artists mature works were so different from Impressionism, they have become known as the Post-Impressionists. Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) explored the capabilities of colors and distorted forms to express his emotions as he confronted nature. Van Goghs father was a Protestant Dutch preacher. Van Gogh became a missionary in the coal mining area of Belgium. He had many professional and personal failures and was at the point of despair. He turned to painting as a was to communicate his experiences. Van Gogh felt that the ability to create was more important to him than God. Creation for Van Gogh involved the expressive use of color. In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent wrote, Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily so as to express myself forcibly. His use of color was not locally true from the point of view of the delusive realist, but color suggesting some emotion of an ardent temperament. This desire for color expression led to Vincents expressive application of color. The thick, broad, quick strokes seemed to enhance the intensity of his colors. The Night Cafe is an interior scene that has been charged with energy. The apparently benign atmosphere was meant to be oppressive. Van Gogh described it as a place where on can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime. Starry Night was painted in 1889, one year before Van Goghs death. At the time of the painting he was living in the asylum where he had committed himself. This work has been shown to correspond to the view Van Gogh had from his asylum window. Here Van Gogh seems to depict the vastness of the universe, filled with swirling, churning, and exploding stars

and galaxies, with the earth and humanity huddling beneath it. The dark deep blue that engulfs the painting suggests a quiet but pervasive depression that inflicted Van Gogh. Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) also rejected objective representation in favor of subjective expression. He broke with the Impressionist studies of minutely contrasted hues because he believed color should be expressive and that the artists power to determine the colors in a painting was a seminal element of creativity. Gauguin's application of color and paint appears much flatter, often visually dissolving into abstract patterns of patches, than does Van Goghs heavy and thick brushstrokes. The Vision after the Sermon or Jacob wrestling with an Angel is a work that decisively rejects Realism and Impressionism. Gauguin claimed that he was attracted to Brittanys unspoiled or backwoods culture, with its cultural sensibilities of the past. These were the natural people held up by Rousseau. Gauguin chose to ignore the many modern developments that transformed the region into a profitable economy. The painting shows the local Breton women, wearing their starched white Sunday caps and black dresses, similar to our views of the Amish. They are visualizing the sermon that was preached at church regarding Jacobs encounter with the Holy Spirit (Gen 32:24-30). Gauguin composed the picture to focus the viewer on the idea and intensity of the message. Gauguin twisted the perspective and allotted the space to emphasize the innocent faith of the unquestioning women, while shrinking Jacob and the angel. The painting is transformed from traditional painting into abstract, expressive patterns of line, shape, and pure color. Gauguin had a brief association with Van Gogh in Arles, but finally settled in Tahiti. He thought it would be more natural than materialistic Europe but he found it to be more developed than he expected. He moved to the Tahitian countryside to try and find his untamed nature. It is here that he displayed his fascination with primitive life and brilliant color. Gauguin often designed his canvas indirectly on native motifs and the color harmonies of the tropical flora on the island. Despite the lure of the South Pacific, Gauguins health suffered and his art was not well received. In 1897, worn down by these obstacles, he tried to take his own life, but failed. Before his death, he completed Where Do We Come From? Why are we? Where Are We Going? This painting can be viewed as a summary of Gauguins artistic methods and world view. Gauguin in a letter to a friend wrote that this painting was comparable to the Gospels. However it displays a pessimistic message of lifes inevitability. He wrote: Where are we going? Near to death an old woman... What are we? Day to day existence... Where do we come from? Source. Child, life begins... Behind a tree two sinister figures, cloaked in garments of somber colour, introduce near the tree of knowledge, their note of anguish caused by that very knowledge in

contrast to some simple beings in a virgin nature, which might be paradise as conceived by humanity, who give themselves up to the happiness of the living In terms of style, this painting demonstrates his commitment to expressive color. Though the landscape is recognizable, most of the scene, other than the figures, is composed of areas of flat, unmodulated color, which conveys richness and intensity. Gauguin died in 1903. Despite a brief career, his art and ideas greatly influenced subsequent generations of artists. Georges Seurat (1859-1891) painted works that were intellectual rather than expressionistic in the use of color. He devised a disciplined and painstaking system of painting that focused on color analysis. Seurat was less concerned with the recording of immediate color sensations than he was with their careful systematic organization of a new kind of pictorial order. Seurats system, known as pointillism or divisionism, involved careful observation of color and separating it into its component parts. The artist then applied these pure component colors to the canvas in tiny dots or daubs. Thus, the shapes, figures and faces in the image only become comprehensible from a distance when the viewers eye blends the many pigment dots. Pointillism was on view at the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition in 1886, when Seurat showed his A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Depicting the familiar recreational theme of the Impressionists, Seurats painting seems strangely rigid and remote, unlike the spontaneous representations of the Impressionists. Seurats painting also recognized the shifting social and class relationships of the time. The locale depicted is La Grande Jatte (The Big Bowl), an island in the Seine river, near one of Paris rapidly growing industrial suburbs. The Scene captures a Sunday afternoon of people of various classes, from the sleeveless worker lounging in the left program, to the middle class man and women next to him. Most of the people where in their Sunday best, making class distinction less obvious. Mass production of the Industrial Age also diminished the differences that fashion historically signified. Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) also turned from Impressionism to develop a more analytical style. Cezanne admired Delacroix, and allied himself with the Impressionists and their principles. Yet after time and his studies of the Old Masters in the Louvre, he came to the belief that Impressionism lacked form and structure. Cezanne declared that he wanted to make of Impressionism something solid and durable like the art in museums. In Mont Sainte-Victoire, we see Cezannes new aesthetic on display. His aim was not to depict photographic truth, of the fleeting moment, rather, he depicts a lasting structure behind the formless and fleeting visual information the eye absorbs. Cezanne attempted to intellectually order the lines, planes, and colors that comprise nature. His had a goal of doing Poussin over entirely from nature, meaning that Poussins effects of distance, depth, structure, and solidity must be achieved by traditional perspective and chiaroscuro but in terms of the

color patterns an optical analysis of nature provides. Rather than seeing nature as rounded, Cezanne depicted form in terms of small planes. He also used the intrinsic qualities of color, and the power of colors to modify the direction and depth of lines and planes. He used the hue, value, and saturation of color to advance and recede planes, (warm colors advance, cool colors recede) it creates volume and spatial depth. Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth that is a section of nature... Lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth. But nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need of introducing into our light vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blue to give the impression of air. In Cezannes Basket of Apples, the objects have lost something of their individual character as bottles and fruit approach the conditions of cylinders and spheres. The still life was a good vehicle for the artists experiments, as he could arrange a limited number of selected objects to provide a well ordered point of departure. So analytical, meticulous, and time consuming was Cezannes approach that he had to use artificial fruit because real fruit would often rot. Basket full of Apples captures the solidity of each object by juxtaposing color patches. Volume and solidity of the space appear disjointed in the depiction of the discontinuous table edges and multiple points of view. In his study of space and volume, Cezanne articulated different viewpoints in the same work. This, along with seeing form in terms of planes, constituted a significant paradigm shift in how space was depicted the previous 500 years in Western culture, and greatly influenced the next generation of artists. Picasso called Cezanne the Father of Cubism.

The Rise of the Avant-Garde

Each successive modernist movement of the 19th century -- Realism, Impressionism, and PostImpressionism -- challenged artistic conventions of the time with greater intensity and frequency. This relentless challenge gave rise to the avant-garde. Use of this term has expanded over the years; it now serves as a synonym for any particularly new or cutting edge cultural manifestation. The word avant-garde, which means front guard, derived from 19th century French military usage. The avant-garde were soldiers sent ahead of the armys main body to reconnoiter and make occasional raids on the enemy. Politicians who deemed themselves visionary and forward thinking subsequently adopted the term. It then migrated to the art world in the 1880s, where it referred to artists who were ahead of their time and who transgressed the limits of established art forms. The avant-garde were modernists in that they rejected the classical, academic, or traditional and they adopted a critical stance toward their respective media. Yet they departed from modernism in their arts extreme transgressiveness or subversiveness, Further, the avant-garde increasingly disengaged themselves from a public audience. In zealously exploring the premises and formal qualities of painting, sculpture, and other media, avant-garde artists created an insular community whose members seemed to speak only to one another in their work. The Post-Impressionists were the first to be labeled avant-

garde. Avant-garde principles appealed to greater number numbers of artists as the 20th century dawned. In the art scene in many graduate schools and many undergraduate programs, one is expected to be avant-garde. Symbolism By the end of the 19th century, the representation of nature had become completely subjectivized, to the point that artists did not imitate nature but created free interpretations of it. Artists rejected the optical world as observed in favor of a fantasy world, of forms they conjured in their free imagination, with or without reference to things conventionally seen. Technique and ideas were individual to each artist. Color, line, and shape, were used as symbols of personal emotions in response to the world. These artists who rejected the visual world were solely concerned with expressing reality in accord with their spirit and intuition. Deliberately choosing to stand outside of convention and tradition, such artists spoke like prophets, in signs and symbols. Symbolism was a term that originally applied to a general European movement that was applied to both art and literature. Symbolists disdained Realism as trivial, and asserted that fact must be transformed into a symbol of inner experience of that fact. The task of the Symbolist was not to see things, but to see through them to a significance and reality far deeper than what superficial appearance gave. One group of Symbolist painters was called the Nabis (the Hebrew word for prophet) and was influenced by the work of Gauguin. An influential Symbolist poet, Rimbaud, said that to achieve the Seers insight, artists must become deranged. In effect, they must systematically unhinge and confuse the everyday faculties of sense and reason, which served only to blur artistic vision. The artists mystical vision must convert the objects of the common sense world into symbols of a reality beyond that world and ultimately, a reality from within the individual. The extreme subjectivism of the Symbolists led them to cultivate all the resources of fantasy and imagination, no matter how deeply buried or obscure. They urged artists to stand against the vulgar materialism and conventional mores of industrial and middle class society. Through their philosophy of aestheticism, the Symbolists wished to purge literature and art of anything utilitarian, to cultivate an exquisite aesthetic sensitivity, and to make the slogan art for arts sake into doctrine and a way of life. The subjects of the Symbolists became increasingly esoteric and exotic, mysterious, visionary, dreamlike, and fantastic. The Symbolists were contemporary with Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and introduced the world to the concept and the world of unconscious experience. These artists inspired later artists of the 20th century that had great interest in creating art that expressed psychological truth. Pierre Puvis De Chavannes (1824-1898), although never formally identifying himself with the Symbolists, became a prophet of those artists. He rejected Realism and Impressionism, producing an ornamental and reflective art that did not depict the noisy everyday world. In The Sacred Grove, Chavannes deployed statuesque figures in a tranquil landscape with a classical

shrine. The motion of the figures seems suspended in time and conveys a ritual significance. The modeling is bas-relief and there is an mystical calm. The effect is an anti-realistic statement and a rejection of the contemporary materialistic world. The Academy accepted him for his classicism, and the avant-garde for his vindication of imagination and his artistic independence from the contemporary. Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) gravitated toward subjects inspired by dreaming solitude and as remote as possible from the everyday world, in keeping with Symbolist doctrine. His subjects were presented sumptuously and sensually through intricate line, gorgeous color, and richly detailed shape. Jupiter and Semele, one of Moreaus rare finished works, depicts the mortal slave girl Semele, one of Jupiters loves, begged the God to appear to her in all his majesty, a sight so powerful that she dies from it. The artist presented the subject in a setting fit for a Wagner opera, whose music Moreau admired. The glowing color and towering opulent architecture create a very dramatic effect. All the forms are richly detailed. The viewer is transported into the world of imagination free from the confines of the present. Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was also a visionary who used the Impressionist palette to whimsically apply color to the mood radiated by the subject. This image born in the dreaming world and the color analyzed and disassociated from the waking world come together here at the artists will. Redon observed, My originality consists in bringing to life, in a human way, improbable beings and making them live according to the laws of probability, by putting - as far as possible - the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible. Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) was an artist who tried to paint primitive without leaving Paris. He was an untrained artist who produced an art of dream and fantasy in a style that had its own sophistication and uniqueness of the time. His lack of technical ability was compensated by a natural talent for design and an imagination for the exotic. The Sleeping Gypsy shows the title figure in a silent desert world, dreaming beneath a moonlit night. Does the lion mean to menace the gypsy? Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was a Norwegian painter who was linked in spirit to the Symbolists. Munch had a very painful view of life and felt that man was powerless against the forces and feelings of life. He wanted to describe modern psychic life His highly charged paintings were of great influence to the German Expressionists in the early 20th century. The Cry is a famous painting by Munch, of which he made many variations. The figure is placed on a real world bridge, but departs from reality in a very visceral and emotional way. The simplified figure and curvilinear setting seems to amplify the strong emotions. Munch wrote, regarding this work, I stopped and leaned against the balustrade, almost dead with fatigue. Above the blue-black fjord hung the clouds, red as blood and tongues of fire. My friends had left me, and alone, trembling with anguish, I became aware of a vast, infinite cry of nature. The work was originally was titled Despair.

Sculpture in the Later 19th Century

Sculpture was not readily adaptable to the optical sensations favored by the painters. Sculpture served predominantly as an expression of supposedly timeless ideals, rather than the fleeting moment. Yet, sculptors did try to purse many of the ideals important to Realism and Impressionism. Jean- Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875) combined his interest in Realism with a love of Baroque and ancient sculpture and of Michelangelo. Ugolino and his Children is a group based on a passage from Dantes Inferno and shows Count Ugolino with his four sons shut up in a tower to starve to death. In Hell, Ugolino relates to Dante how, in a moment of extreme despair I bit both hands for grief. And they, thinking I did it for hunger, suddenly rose up and said, Father... [and offered him their own flesh as food. The twisting intertwined, and concentrated figures suggest a self devouring torment of frustration and despair. Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was fascinated by the body in motion. Although color was not a significant factor in Rodins work, Impressionist influence manifested itself in the artists constant concern for the effect of light on a three-dimensional surface. Rodin said, The sculptor must learn to reproduce the surface, which means all the vibrates on the surface, soul, love, passion, life... Sculpture is thus the art of hollows and mounds, not of smoothness, or even polished planes. Working in clay and wax, Rodin, fingers were sensitive to the subtle variations surface and the play of constantly shifting light on the body. Walking Man was a study for Saint John the Baptist Preaching of which there is a copy in our St. Louis Art Museum. Rodin captured the sense of the body in motion, not only by the stance, but by the careful manipulation on the surface to create a sense of vibrating light. Careful attention to detail is compounded with a sketchy modeling. The Burghers of Calais depicts a group of the city leaders of the medieval French town of Calais that gave their lives so that the English, who had the town under siege, would spare the lives of the towns people. Rodin grossly distorted the figures to heighten the anguish and pain of the leaders and the monumentality of their sacrifice. The figures seem to wander aimlessly, stumbling to their fate. The roughly textured surface adds to the despair. The work was to be placed at street level, rather than an elevated pedestal (meant to inspire by looking up), in hope that the citizens would be inspired to be face to face with their sacrificial ancestors. The government commissioners found the work so offensive in its Realism, they banished the monument to a remote site and modified the works impact by placing it high on an isolating pedestal. Many of Rodins works were left unfinished or were deliberate fragments. Seeing the aesthetic and expressive value of these works, modern viewers and sculptors have developed a taste for how the sketch, half finished figure, the fragment, and the vignette lifted out of context all have the power of suggestion and understatement. Rodins ability to capture the quality of the transitory through his highly textured surfaces while revealing larger themes and deeper, lasting sensibilities explains the impact he had on 20th century artists.

The Arts and Crafts Movement

While many artists embraced industrialization, mass production, and the modern life, others decried the impact of rapid industrialization. One response came from the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. It developed in the later 19th century and was shaped by the ideas of art critic John Ruskin and artist William Morris (1834-1896). Both men believed that industrialization alienated the worker from their own nature. The advocated an art made by the people for the people as a joy for the maker and the user. This condemnation of capitalism and support for manual laborers were compatible with socialism, and many artists considered themselves socialists and participated in the labor movement. Members of the Arts and Crafts Movement dedicated themselves to producing functional objects with high aesthetic value for a wide public. The style they advocated was based on natural, rather than artificial, forms and often consisted of repeated designs of floral or geometric patterns. Morris contributed to this populist art by forming a decorating firm that produced wall paper, textiles, tiles, furniture, books, rugs, stained glass, and pottery. The firms services were in great demand. In 1867, Morris decorated the Green Dining Room at Londons South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), the center of public art education and home of decorative art collections. Nothing is left to its own; every area is carefully designed and imbued with intricate design. In Scotland, Rennie Scott Mackintosh (1868-1929), popularized this ideal by designing a number of tea rooms. The Ladies Tea Room, in the Ingram Street Tea Room in Glasgow is consistent with Morris vision of a functional, exquisitely designed art. The chairs, stained glass windows, large panels of colored gesso and twine, and other areas all combine in a unifying, rhythmic, and geometric design.

Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau (New Art) was an architectural and design movement that developed out of the ideas

promoted by the Arts and Crafts Movement. Proponents of this movement tried to synthesize all the arts in a determined attempt to create art based on natural forms that could be mass produced for a large audience. The Art Nouveau style emerged at the end of the 19th century and adapted the twining plant form to the needs of architecture, painting, sculpture, and all the decorative arts. The mature Art Nouveau style was first seen in houses designed in Brussels in the 1890s by Victor Horta (1861-1947). The staircase in the Van Eetvelde House is a good example. Every detail functions as part of a living whole. The curvilinear structures and patterning combine with actual plant forms, to create a total environment. Art Nouveau artists were inspired by Japanese print designs, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and their Post-Impressionist, Symbolist contemporaries.

Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) was one of a group of English artists whose work existed at the intersection of Symbolism and Art Nouveau. Salome is an illustration for a book by Oscar Wilde. The Peacock Skirt perfectly represents the Art Nouveau style. Banishing Realism, Beardsley confined himself to lines and patterns of black and white, eliminating all shading. The elastic line encloses sweeping curvilinear shapes that lie flat on the surface. Some of the spaces are left blank, while others are filled with swirling complexes of mostly organic motifs. Art Nouveau achieved its most personal expression in the architecture of Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926). Gaudi was an ironworker who became an architect. He long to create a style that was both modern and appropriate to his country. His designs took inspiration from MoorishSpanish architecture and from simple architecture of his native Catalonia. He conceived of a building as a whole and molded it like a sculptor would model clay. His work proceeded slowly under the guidance of his intuition and imagination. Gaudi, like Brunelleschi, had to develop new structural techniques that would allow him to actually construct his vision. Casa Mila is a apartment house that is a wonderful free form mass that wraps itself around a street corner. Lacy iron railings enliven the swelling curves of the stone cut facade. Dormer windows peep from the undulating roof capped by writhing chimneys. The cave-like portal allows entrance into the building. This feature may reflect the excitement that swept Spain in 1879 following the discovery of Paleolithic cave paintings at Altamira. Gaudi felt that each of his buildings was symbolically a living thing and the passionate naturalism of his designs is a spiritual kin of early 20th century Expressionist painting and sculpture.

Fin de Sicle Culture

The momentous changes of the century that the Realists and Impressionists had responded to were now familiar and ordinary at the end of the 19th century. Fin de Sicle end of the century, describes not only a chronological time, but also refers to a certain sensibility. There had been significant political upheaval and the growth of the middle class and their quest for the good life. All these changes evolved into a culture of decadence and indulgence. Characteristic of this period was an intense preoccupation with sexual drives, powers and perversions: the femme fatale was a particularly resonant figure. People also immersed themselves in the exploration of the unconsciousness, popularized by the work of Sigmund Freud. This culture was unrestrained and freewheeling, but the determination to enjoy life masked an anxiety prompted by the fluctuating political situation and uncertain future. The country most closely associated with this culture was Austria. One Viennese artist whose work captures the periods flamboyance, but tempers it with unsettling undertones was Gustauv Klimt (1863-1918). In The Kiss, Klimt depicted a couple locked in sensual embrace. Rather than depiction the full figures, Klimt has dissolved the figures clothing into shimmering extravagant flat patterning. The patterning shows clear ties to Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts Movement and the flatness of modernism. Paintings such as The Kiss were visual manifestations of the end of the century spirit because the captured a decadence conveyed by opulent and sensuous images.

Other Architecture of the Later 19th Century

New technologies and the changing needs of urbanized, industrialized, society affected architecture throughout the Western world. Since the 18th century, cast iron had significant influence of the size, strength, and fire resistance of structures. Steel, available after 1860, allowed architects to enclose even larger spaces, such as railway stations and exposition halls. The Realist impulse encouraged an architecture that expressed a buildings purpose, rather than hide its function. French engineer architect Alexander-Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) responded to this idea through his metal skeleton structures that made important contributions to the development of the 20th century skyscraper. Eiffel trained in Paris and began designing exhibition halls, bridges, and the interior armature for the Statue of Liberty. The Eiffel Tower was designed for a great exhibition in Paris in 1889. It was seen at the time as a symbol of modern Paris and a symbol of 19th century civilization. Its needle shaft rises to a height of 984 feet above the city, and was for many years the tallest building in the world. The interpretation of the inner and the outer space became a hallmark of 20th century architecture. Eiffels metal skeleton structures, as well as other innovative architecture, jolted some to the realization that the new materials and new processes might germinate a completely new style and a radically innovative approach to architectural design. The desire for greater speed and economy in construction as well as reduction in fire hazards, prompted greater use of cast and wrought iron in the construction of many buildings. A series of disastrous fires in the 1870s in New York, Boston and Chicago, demonstrated that cast iron still did not hold up to the effects of fire. This led to the encasing of the cast iron in stone masonry, combining cast irons strength with stones fire resistance. In cities where land was at a premium, there was a need to build higher. Metal could support such structures. With the invention off the elevator, first installed in the Equitable Building in New York in 1868-1871), height was made more effective. The skyscraper was born. Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), created architectural designs that displayed a strong Romanesque influence that Hobson greatly admired; rounded arches and masonry walls. The Marshall Field Wholesale Store (now demolished) was a vast building occupying a city block and designed for practical purposes. The building shows the tripartite levels of a Renaissance palace, yet has no classical ornament. The massive stone courses and strong horizontality of the windowsills define the levels and stress the long sweep of the building. The structural frame lies behind the great masonry screen. The great arcades open up the walls of this large scale building. This building design pointed the way to the modern total penetration of the walls and the transformation of them into mere screens or curtains that serve both to echo the underlying structural grid and to protect it from weather. Henry Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) is widely considered America's first truly modern architect. Instead of imitating historic styles, he created original forms and details. Older architectural

styles were designed for buildings that were wide, but Sullivan was able to create aesthetic unity in buildings that were tall. To achieve this, he utilized the latest technological developments to create light-filled, wellventilated, office buildings and adorned both interiors and exteriors with ornate embellishments. Such decoration served to connect commerce and culture, and imbued these white-collar work spaces with a sense of refinement and taste. Louis Sullivan believed that the exterior of an office building should reflect its interior structure and its interior functions. Ornament, where it was used, must be derived from Nature, rejecting classical references and the ubiquitous arches Sullivan's designs often used masonry walls with terra cotta designs. Intertwining vines and leaves combined with crisp geometric shapes. This Sullivanesque style was imitated by other architects, and his later work formed the foundation for the ideas of his student, Frank Lloyd Wright. Wainwright Building Sullivans first successful expression of the tall office building was the Wainwright building, built in 1890 in St. Louis. Sullivan's functional analysis equates the building to a column, base, shaft and capital. First floor with large open spaces for merchandise establishments, banks, etc. The top floor is for mechanical equipment. The shafts between floor offices are all essentially the same size and shape. In the Wainwright Building Sullivan developed the expression for the tall office building which would be accepted by the Modern Movement as the model solution. Sullivan's achievement is in the area of expression. His ornament, derived from nature and from geometry was close to Art Nouveau in Europe. Its organic nature, basic continuity, influenced a young man in Sullivan's office in his thinking toward "Organic Architecture"- Frank Lloyd Wright. The Guaranty (Prudential) Building in Buffalo, New York was built 1894-1896. The structure is steel with a terra cotta sheath. The imposing scale of the building and the regularity of the window placements served as an expression of the large-scale, refined, and orderly office work that took place within. Sullivan tempered the severity of the structure with lively ornamentation both on the piers and cornice on the exterior and the stairway balustrades (rails), elevator cages, and ceilings in the interior. Form follows function was Sullivans famous dictum, and was the slogan of early 20th century architects, is clearly seen here. Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building Another of Sullivans buildings, the Carson Pire Scott and Company Building, in Chicago, carried his principles still further. One of the most important structures in early modern architecture, this building required broad, open, well-illuminated, display spaces. The minimal

structural steel skeleton permitted the achievement of that goal. Its modular construction and design was very influential. The lowest two levels of the building are covered in a rich ornamental cast iron facade that frame the large display windows as a frame would a picture, thus form follows function. It is an excellent example of Sullivan's genius for architectural ornament. Although the new architectural models and materials were important, not all accepted them. Historical styles were still prominent especially in the homes designed for the wealthy industrialists and railroad barons, who desired lavish abodes befitting medieval barons or Renaissance princes. Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895) specialized in serving the building ambitions of Americas new aristocracy. He brought Renaissance and Baroque forms to the ostentatious plans. The Breakers was built as the Newport summer home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, a member of the wealthy United States Vanderbilt family. Designed by renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt and with interior decoration by Jules Allard and Sons and Ogden Codman, Jr., the 75-room mansion boasts approximately 138,000 sq. ft. of living space. The interior rooms are grand in scale and sumptuously rich in decor, each having its own variations of classical columns, painted ceilings, lavish fabrics, and sculptural trimmings. The home was constructed between 1893 and 1895 at the then-astronomical cost of more than seven million dollars ($151,481,222.91 in today's dollars adjusted for inflation). The Ochre Point Avenue entrance is marked by sculpted iron gates and 30 foot high walkway gates are part of a 12 foot high limestone and iron fence that borders the property on all but the ocean side. The 250' x 150' dimensions of the five story mansion are aligned symmetrically around a central Great Hall, rising some 45 feet above the majestic main stairway. The periods extravagance and ostentation in architecture extended to interior decor. Furniture, lights, rugs, and wallpaper, with designs inspired by sensuous opulence of Art Nouveau were popular. Louis Comfort Tiffany was among those famous for creating these objects. His Lotus Table Lamp was constructed of a leaded glass that was patented by Tiffany and pieced together in a mosaic design. The bronze lamp stand is based on the curvilinear floral forms of the lotus. Tiffany's designs were intended for the wealthy and very expensive. Because of expense and time, only one lamp was crafted at a time, insuring high quality craftsmanship that was prized by the Arts and Crafts Movement. The lavish opulence of the period remained popular with the ultra rich until World War I shattered the times.