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Impressionism Art Movement
The Impressionism movement in the art world started when a group of artists organized an exhibition in Paris, France. [1] This style of painting spread to other countries in Europe, but the most famous Impressionists are French such as Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro. [2] Canvases with Impressionism artwork display thick brushstrokes that can be seen at close range. Also, the painters developed scenes of leisure with bright colors all over their paintings.
Show Artwork
A group of French artists in 1874 known as the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. were the ones that had their artwork displayed [1] at the studio of photographer/journalist Felix Nadar in Paris. They had a total of eight shows between 1874 and 1886. [3] Preceding artistic movements, for example Classicism and Realism, swayed the Impressionist painters. People paid attention to art after Paris hosted a World Fair in 1855. This event furnished to the city’s standing as the hub of the art world. It also became the place to be for aspiring painters. [2]
Opt for Own Exhibition
Members of the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. didn’t achieve much success after forming their own art show. An alternative for the members was to continue have their artwork shown at the more established Salon de Paris, where they would have more people looking at paintings. [4] The Academie de Beaux-Arts, or Academy of Fine Arts, set the standards for French art since the 1600s. [5] The Salon was created by the Academy so that once a year some artists will be honored for their ability to created fascinating and conforming artworks that meet the Academy’s requirements for Realism piece of art. [1, 5]
Claude Monet Painting
Conservative art critic Louis Leroy was unkind to the artists after seeing the first exhibition that the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. set up. Yet, he also was responsible for the existence of the term Impressionism. He was not satisfied with Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris) 1873 because it seemed to be unfinished. Louis felt it was just a sketch or an “impression.” He wasn’t happy with the independent artists not mixing colors, using quick, broken brushstrokes that barely showed any shape, and indulging on the effects of light. Hence, it was this painting that gave Impressionist movement its name. [1, 6]
My Thoughts
After reading some online publications, I figure the French Impressionists yearned for some attention since their artwork weren’t getting much accolades from the judges at Salon. Nothing was mentioned about the judges’ personal backgrounds. Since the Academie de Beaux-Arts was aligned in a way with the French government, I would say they didn’t want to lose their integrity and position. The public trust the jury’s viewpoints on how to separate good art from mediocre art. They may have voted against the Impressionists’ earlier works even if they thought the artwork were ingenious. I know I would behave like that. I’ll have fears of might be seen as a pariah among my peers.
The Impressionists wanted to showcase different genre of paintings. For whatever reason, the established requirement that defines appropriate art wasn’t good enough. I can’t blame them for being bored of looking at the same type of subjects to paint. I’m sure it was more relaxing and mellow to study individuals just lounging around the outdoors in Paris, where the average temperature is 75 degrees F during the summer and around 35 degrees F during the winter. France gets an annual rainfall of approximately 786mm/31 inches. I can visualize that members of the court and the Church have their impolite ways to have portraits of them done the way they want it. And of course painters would need to tolerate the subjects not posing properly so the portrait won’t be ridiculed. Nobody wants to be stressed out for any reason.
I’m sure the Impressionists wanted others to see themselves as innovators. They were showing a unique way to paint brilliant images. Moreover, they saw their paintings being worthy of seen as a stimulating way to read any artistic expressions. Maybe they had a message for people to find out.
References
[1] www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/imml/hd_imml.htm
[2] www.uncg.edu/rom/courses/common/impressionism.htm
[3] http://www.impressionism.org/
[4] http://www.impressionism.org/cafe.htm
[5] http://jnootzie.hubpages.com/hub/Art-Through-the-Ages-Impressionism
[6] http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/c19th/impressionism.htm
My other hubs that you may or may not be interested in reading.
Comments
I like some of Monet's paintings, especially the Luncheon (1898). Yet, my favorite painter lived two and a half centuries before him - a Dutch painter and etcher, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn :) I prefer the baroque movement and the Dutch golden age even more because of detailed realism traditions (in the latter). Of course, it's always interesting and useful to know about other movements and artists :)
- Author
Thank you vox vocis for reading and commenting on my hub. I know a little bit of art history. I would've write more about the various art movements, but it's more fun for me to write about football. Anyways, I choose to write about the Impressionism because of Van Gogh.
I am also fascinated with the Dutch realism paintings. I plan to write about art nouveau whenever I make time. I am fond of curves in drawings.
Your site is important to the preservation of artmove,ents such as realism and impressionism but also Upside-Down Art known as Masg.
Thank you for providing it!
To me patterns take on a life of their own, like living entities existing within the mind and I cannot help but to give them their due in the spotlight. Though we’ve involved museums around the globe in my work I am simply content working alone, researching and developing more patterns.
The L. R. Emerson II collection totaled over 100,000 works by 2010 and by 2011 comprised of my depicting critically acclaimed musician Leon Russell as its’ Mona Lisa – making Leon Russell the “poster child” or first celebrity ever featured in an Upside-Down Artwork. In 2012 the official L. R. Emerson II brand was announced to major design communities. Like Emerson knives, L. R. Emerson II’s uncle Ernest Emerson knows the meaning of Brand reliance and delivery.
For me there are patterns in everything ad they are constantly communicating to me – calling me to draw them and manipulate or engage them somehow or another.
In 2006 and again in 2007, I established a world record
and subsequently broke that same record for “The Most Works created in an Hour”. The record stand to this day at 87 works created in one hour.
Again, it is an obsession with patterns and also shapes and forms that pulses though my “art heart”. As a child my passion was creating, drawing, painting and coloring patterns over and over again.
Upside-Down Art is certainly related to Ambigrams and I have spent the past thirty years striving to develop the ultimate Upside-Down Artwork - working as an upside-down artist.
Three decades later I am pleased to say I have been called the Thomas Edison of artmaking and my discoveries have been compared to Giotto's attempts at drawing in Perspective using an algebraic method to determine the placement of distant lines.
It is correct that Peter Newell honed Amigrams to an early high point but even the radial of the ancient Maya proves inverted, upside-down thinking has actually existed for eons.
Being at the current forefront of Upside-Down Art I am often credited with inventing it but I quickly explain that while I have set world records and invented dozens of new methods the compositional variant itself has a longer history than I can claim.
In my own time, however I have moved the media position to focus more centrally on Upside-Down Art so that the rest of the works will one day embrace the fact that other forms of compositional balance do indeed exist.
Coming from a time when art education did not offer my generation the compulsions toward "the new" I set out to create my own "new". I invented Masg - a form of Upside-Down composition which has landed me in the Famous Artist category. Though I was successful in the mid 1980's I kept “Masg” or Upside-Down Art a secret for 20 years until my own styles and methods has been documented and numbered in excess of 37 forms.
Whereas my works had numbered in excess of 10,000 by 2005 and there were over 100 awards in my resume I was finally confident my decades of research in Upside-Down thinking was relevant and worth sharing.
Today I am called upon to lead the movement and am certainly spearheading the evolution of Upside-Down Art but am most pleased when I see so many artists now mimicking my ideas as so many predicted would happen.
Major British sculptor Anish Kapor has joined the Upside-Down Art Movement and Georg Baselitz has been a central figure in his own ways since the 70's. Others have also begun to trend their style toward upside-down thinking such as Dana Helms who does not make actual Upside-Down art but at least works upside-down! Another person who has begun to follow my work is Dai Giang who also does not exactly make ambigrams but at minimum is creating upright works , that he calls ‘Upsidedownism’ in which at least the compositions have some parts within that are shown upside-down.
As we finally see artists across the globe continue to accept the evidence that art texts, world-wide are wrong I shall be then be pleased to rest. I'll rest knowing then Upside-Down Art or as I termed it Masg from Gaelic meaning to mix or infuse has finally left it's mark on art history.
2012 marks the 29th Anniversary of my published, multi-directional artistic style named Masg, from Gaelic meaning to mix; or infuse. Masg is better known as Upside-Down Art.
Using key segments of my research, I published the Purple Tree: Art in a Boundless Age, 2009 which documents the evolutionary process and changes my artmaking has undergone since 1984.
In reflection, I see whereby I survived the chaotic art transitions many of us experienced in the 1980’s to later realize my own pioneering exploration has since changed the very way other artists and photographers compose their work.
For thirty years, I have strived to revolutionize the art world by compelling artists, historians, critics and conservators to embrace changes the trident compositional “norm” that dominates artmaking today. Enduring decades of artistic experimentation, I have set a mark which today compels others to challenge compositional truisms. Simply put, I have provided a firm rationale to insist that art education texts worldwide need revision!
Recently internationally acclaimed artist Georg Baselitz commented he found my work Upside-Down Art “…inspiring” which is encouraging noting Baselitz’ own art has sold for as much as $4.2 million dollars at auction and is equally unusual.
Since 2005, my work has been exposed to a world audience. In 2011, I produced Upside-Down Art for Leon Russell who was inducted with support from musical collaborator Sir Elton John into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Working in the in the mid 1980’s as an advertising designer connected me with performers and entrepreneurs. Initially, I attended Platt College in 1985 and five years later delighted in seeing my artwork presented on stage to Grammy Winning singer/songwriter Leon Russell who later invited me to work for him.
Keeping active in the arts, I have functioned in many varied design environments including printing and publishing, fashion design, advertising sales and design, photography, fine arts exhibition and art education.
Historically, we hold that three primary balances exist for arranging subjects within the picture plane; Symmetrical Balance, Asymmetrical Balance and Radial balance.
This is fine, but as a student artist living in the early 1980’s the limited choices of compositional balance left me feeling artistically confined. Contrarily, against my teacher’s advice I elected to design my compositions by solving the subjects from multiple directions. Determined to find my own road, I literally turned my artwork upside-down at a time when averting the compositional truism was neither taught nor accepted.
Despite rejection, I began to simply devise my subsequent visual riddles from multiple directions.
I continued into the mid 1980’s making hundreds and later thousands of works – continuing to experiment with compositional variants. This pioneering exploration of the compositional realm subsequently lead me to cultivate 37, new documented artmaking methods which overall are my primary contribution to art in the 20th and 21st Century.
In 2005, after having been kept secret for over two decades, Masg or Upside-Down Art was introduced to more than 500 galleries and in excess of 50 renowned museums worldwide including:
National Gallery
Tate Museum, London
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Musée du Louvre, Paris
The Museum of Modern Art, NYC
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Since 2005, my family and I have seen other artists and photographers navigate toward designing from multi-directional vantages. Things were different however when I started.
The art world and the web was completely void of any evidence of any artist working upside-down other than Georg Baselitz who was featured in 1984 in the Los Angeles Times with his neo-expressionist paintings, 1880’s cartoo