The 19th century was a time of great change and revolution, especially in France. With the reconstruction of Paris, the late 19th century was a perfect time for a fresh, new look in the world of art. The city was seen as the cultural capital of the world and could offer a lot to the new movements in art. There were institutions for art training, much city, country-side, and life to use as subjects, and plenty of money and people to buy and enjoy the works created.  With the growth of the railroad, artists began to travel around Europe to broaden their knowledge. As new ideas came into play, old ideas of expression and expressiveness began to take a new shape. Rather than the figure showing expression as in the style of the Renaissance, art now reflected the expression and emotion of the artist, with a greater focus on line and color rather than facial and bodily movement. Thus, art is now an expression of the artist. It is probably more accurate to talk about the artistic movements of the time, rather than the different artists from different countries.  These movements include Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Expressionism.

Romanticism started as a literary movement in the late 18th century and as it came to include the visual arts it "caused a re-evaluation of the nature of art and the role of the artist in society". Characteristics include: placing emotion and intuition before reason; a belief that there are crucial areas of experience neglected by the rational mind; and a belief in the general importance of the individual, the personal and the subjective. While later movements such as realism overshadowed Romanticism, its ideas continued into the later 19th and 20th centuries.Romanticism was truly a reaction against the Enlightenment and "an earlier confidence in the power of reason", and romantic painters exemplify this.

In general, Romanticism is associated with painting and is characterized by new explorations in color effects and associations as well as a tendency toward extremes. The movement was so varied that there was a revival of just about every historical style before the end of the 19th century. A change in the idea of aesthetics also occurred, as well as a new understanding of the sublime as a powerful force rather than just supreme beauty. The movements that followed Romanticism including the Aesthetic, Symbolism, Expressionism, Surrealism and Neo-Romanticism further "reaffirmed Romantic ideas in one way or another".
 
 

This very Romantic painting by Goya serves as a social satire about the oppressive Napoleonic forces in Spain at the time. There is no sense of justice and the primary appeal to the work should be to the emotions. A sense of the instantaneous and of passing time work together as we see fear and death on the faces of the victims. The light source is contained within the painting and leaves the soldiers anonymous in the shadows. While the city is seen in the background, the power of the church is completely unimportant, despite the Christ-like pose and light of the central victim. This painting exemplifies Romanticism as it explores a new subject matter as well as color effects, and places an extreme importance on the power of emotion.

The movement of Impressionism is quite fascinating for each artist’s individual thinking and style comes alive in their works. The original group of young Impressionist painters include well-known names like Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley, and lasted as a movement for about fifteen years with the first exhibition in 1874 and the last in 1885.

Impressionist artists were concerned with the affects and quality of light, and knew how colors could complement or alter one another. The spontaneity of their painting was a great contrast to academic paintings of the past, and leisure time activities were a favorite subject. Impressionist artists tended to avoid "the painful realities of the world, of violence, war, heartache, illness and death" (Thomson, 13). By the 1870s, the Impressionists were united and aimed to paint modern life. While the name impressionism derives from realism, the movement was deemed as such because of Monet’s “Impression Sunrise”.

Claude Monet is very much known for his series painting where "his goal seems to have been to record changes in the color, intensity and direction of light on" his subject matter. While he explored poplars, Rouen Cathedral, snowcaps, river scenes, Venice, watergardens at Giverny and waterlilies, it is in his haystack series paintings that "Monet maintained a subtle balance between objective description and emotional expression". Throughout Monet's career he moved from an Impressionistic to a more expressionistic style.

The Impressionist movement soon turned into Post-Impressionism as the group had lost a clear form. A sense of meaning was soon gone and nothing was left from the heart and soul of the artist.

While he came under the influence of Impressionists, his works contained something very personal to him and he is really known as an expressionist. His desire to make beautiful things that come from within himself as well as his desire to reach out to those around him, help to define his role as as such a painter. While in Paris he said, "What is required in art nowadays is something very much alive, very strong in color, very much intensified".

In May of 1886 Van Gogh saw the works of pointilist painter Georges Seurat and was intrigued enough to test out this style. For a while we can see this influence through new forms of expression in his works.

Van Gogh was also influenced by 20th century post-impressionist painter Paul Cezanne. Cezanne tended to paint what he felt, not what he saw, and is known mostly for his works with still life. Cezanne believed very much in multiple point of views and thought that our feelings can indeed affect how and what we see. Van Gogh's inner state of mind certainly played a large role in his subject matter and painting as a whole. Characterized by his extreme uses of color and fragmentary brushmarks, his own feelings are fairly evident in his works. Van Gogh shot himself in 1890. "The truth is, we can only make our pictures speak".

Questions: (How) does the Romantic movement change the expressive quality of art? Is expressionism the epitome of expressive art?

Article Two: McCay Vernon and Marjie Baughman present a very controversial issue in their article, "Art, Madness, and Human Interaction". They believe that a number of great artists have been mentally ill and thus have produced works that reflect their inner mental states. Let's take a look at each artist and then decide if this is really the case.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890): "The more I become decomposed, the more sick and fragmented I am, the more I become an artist". Throughout his early life Van Gogh desired to help those less fortunate than himself, however was unsuccessful in doing this. This failure caused him to go into a state of deep depression. While "his early works reflected his giftedness", it is his later works in the last two years of his life that he is most known for. It was at this time that he was in a deep state of depression, experiencing hallucinations and creating over two-hundred paintings in a "manic-like productivity". When he admitted himself to a mental hospital in May of 1889, he continued to paint, though not with the same consistency and productivity. Van Gogh returned to Paris "depressed and morbid, psychologically a mere shadow of his former self", and in July of 1890 he shot himself.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903): Gauguin began his second career of painting at the age of thirty five after starting a family and becoming a successful businessman. He literally gave up everything and lived in poverty before moving to Tahiti. His early years there were happy, however in 1897 he was "syphilitic, suicidal, and severely depressed by the death of his daughter". His greatest painting, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, was created during this time.

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956): "...painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is". Pollock suffered from severe depression and alcoholism and his "style of work reflected his manic-depressive illness". Although he never worked when he was intoxicated, he did place his canvas on the floors with a hard backing so that they "could withstand the physical force of his onslaught". During the last few years of his life, his "depression was overwhelming", but he continued to work until he was killed in a car wreck in 1956. (Go to the contemporary art section to see examples of his works).

Vernon adds an interesting twist by including case studies from her private practice. The cases that she shares with us show how inner feelings and states of mind affect what the subjects draw. Case One was an unhappy deaf student who drew a fireman extinguishing a fire in what is probably a school. Two weeks later he set the school's gym and a residence hall on fire. Case Two was also deaf and unhappy, and at a school that did not provide the learning environment that he obviously needed. He drew a picture of his female teacher, representing her as mean looking. He also drew himself in a very masculine and domineering way. Thankfully, he went to therapy and changed to a school that did provide him with the learning environment he needed. He was asked to draw the same pictures one year later, and he did so in a completely different and posititive way. The drawings were expressions of his inner feelings and completely changed as he became more happy.

Freud said that "the work of art is an expression of its creator's most essential human qualities as well as his technical artistic skills". Painting is an expression of inner feelings, and in the cases of Van Gogh, Munch, Gauguin and Pollock, their mental states greatly affected what came out on paper.

Questions: Do you agree with the authors points on the mental states of the artist having an affect on their works? Do you think that the case studies support this or are they irrelevant? Do you agree that "the greatest of formal and technical skills alone do not make a work of art, that underlying genius in art is the expression of feeling?