The Impressionist movement

Résumé du document

In 1912, the painter Fernand Léger, stigmatised in an acute and modern way the revolutionary dimension of Impressionism, opening the way for modern criticism : “Les Impressionnistes, les premiers ont rejeté la valeur absolue du sujet, pour ne plus en considerer que la valeur relative. Là est le lieu qui rattache et explique toute l'évolution moderne”. * Through this meaningful sentence Léger situates the beginning of modernism with Impressionism. This quotation appears as a striking summary of what is now considered as a series of common places. However, in 1912, such a declaration, was in itself a little revolution, so, let us close examine the words picked by the painter, and let us try to put them in their context. First, the word Impressionism is a neologism, that was coined by a reactionary critic, at the occasion of the 1874 arts exhibition , standing in Nadar's gallery, and which gathered the works of most the guiding-figures of the New Painting, such as Monet, Renoir, who referred Pissarro. Leroy referred to the painters as “Impressionists”, in a derogatory way; he actually mocked what he judged as inferior artists, responsible for a random and unfinished absurd works. In contradiction with the consensual contemporary approach but standard and vague acceptation, the notion of “Impressionism”, which was coined retrospectively in a controversial purpose, never covered a pure aesthetic reality, which should be ruled by a clear set of doctrines and would advocate for a definite and single aesthetics. A study of the historical background leads us to realize, that this critic actually projected a definite and artificial derogatory vision, and a clear political dimension through this label, which was typical of a Conservative Bourgeois audience. So, immediately, the term of “Impressionist movement” does not seem devoid of any social and political connation, that echoes the different readings imposed to this Painting. In the same way, although a traditional heroic conception of Impressionism would tend to portray a unified movement, and elude the early years, 1874 does not mark the birth, or even social recognition of New Painting. The notion of “movement” covered actually a range of ex-students of the School of Fine Arts, who protested against the aristocratic and academic values and rules of the institution, and shared the same aspiration to a new form of expression, which would be more conform to the emerging modern society. Of course, such an aspiration echoed, and so was imbued in a larger political and social concern represented by the Bourgeoisie and the middle-classes, that had largely emerged of the Industrial Revolution.

Extraits

[...] As one has attempted to suggest, Impressionism was never a school, established on a precise set of rules. On the contrary, Impressionism was a revolution because it cast a new and pure eye on a which suddenly became something changing, subjective, and some universal in its multi dimension of language. Such thirst for freedom could not give credit to the reactionary aristocratic prevailing taste, subsidized by a State dominated by an elite that tried to confine the people to silence and ignorance. [...]

[...] So, as the Republic finally fulfilled the Impressionist's aspiration to democratisation of the Salon, it was already to late, and the arts had lost its official status within the modern society. In fact, in 1881, the Gambetta's government awarded Manet with the Legion d'Honneur, and then government the first Minister Ferry used the Beaux Arts to organise a Manet's Retrospective, one year only after his death. The relative emergence of the Impressionists, as a recognized movement, had undermined the aristocratic principle of arts, and called into question the credibility of the critics, who had so despised it before. The capitalist market had invested the artistic sphere. [...]

[...] * Through this meaningful sentence Léger situates the beginning of modernism with Impressionism. This quotation appears as a striking summary of what is now considered as a series of common places. However, in 1912, such a declaration, was in itself a little revolution, so, let us close examine the words picked by the painter, and let us try to put them in their context. First, the word Impressionism is a neologism, that was coined by a reactionary critic, at the occasion of the 1874 arts exhibition , standing in Nadar's gallery, and which gathered the works of most the guiding- figures of the New Painting, such as Monet, Renoir, who referred Pissarro. [...]

[...] Finally, Paul Cézanne appeared as the emblem, or even the leader of a scattered quest for going beyond the Impressionist revolution. He seized with a particular acuity, the nature of the new problems, resulting from social and cultural changes. Discouraged by the misunderstanding of harsh and narrow-minded critics, he had left the Impressionist galleries, for Aix- en Provence, his native town. Here, in his native Midi, he could entirely devote himself to his artistic obsession with combining the Impressionist ideal with the miraculous stability inherited from the Classics. In brief, he wanted “Refaire du Poussin d'après nature”*. [...]

[...] However, cut of any invigorating influence it had gradually collapsed into an academic sclerosis, which cherished standard mythological settings or pompous history painting. Official artists such as David, who showed a zealous will to serve the glory of the Regime, represented the established painting. Although a standard heroic history of Impressionism tends to emphasize its revolutionary dimension, it is striking that such a reactionary vision frontally countered the young artists, who put up a show of libertarian resistance. They manifested a need for creative and aesthetic freedom, they recognized in Japonist and Realist Painting. [...]