Impressionism and the Will to Forget

Week Four Post Four the Political Side of Impressionism

Only some aspects of Impressionism are actually forgetful.  As we learned a few weeks ago the avant-garde  ”references” and “differences” what has gone before.  When Impressionism does this it is not forgetful at all.  One can’t forget an event and reference/difference it at the same time. The covering of the ugliness of the recent past was a conscious effort of forgetfulness.  As Paris progressed from reconstructing to reconstructed, or at least cleaned up, artists painted the optimistic mood as a gloss of brightness over the grim past.   Paul Wood may have seen the phenomenon of a kind of forced optimism during a reconstructive phase as forgetfulness.  He may also have studied such phenomena in other places and times as I have not, but he is right in that the attitudes of artists and the public had shifted away from the political realm.  !870-1871 was such a horrible, bloody and destructive year for France and particularly Paris that we can be sure that anyone in Paris, including artists, would have liked to forget what occurred and look forward with optimism to a brighter future; but with reminders all around, true forgetfulness had to be unlikely. 

Renoir’s Pont Neuf Paris of 1872 shows the bourgeoisie enjoying a leisurely day of nice weather; promenading where citizens had been dying the year before.  We might not know of the events that had taken place in this location in the past but it is sure that Parisians from that time did.  This bright, happy day is portrayed in its own present time with a very realistic mood of joy and a positive outlook.  It references the past by the knowledge that the memories of the people that had been in that location in 1871 are the ”then” and the happy times are the difference “now”.  In Edgar Degas’ Place de la Concorde of 1876 Baron Lepic’s hat conceals the statue of Alsace, draped in black to commemorate the loss of this territory- which is another thing the French preferred to forget.  Monet sought to create beauty and consciously turned away from ugliness; choosing to show the reconstructed railway bridge at Argenteuil in 1874 and the garden of the Tuileries rather than the ruin of the palace in his painting of 1876.

 In the 1840’s through 1860’s artists were using a earthier, grittier palette to portray the real lives of workers, protest against the salon system, and present their political ideals to the general public.  Artists who helped organize and support the Commune such as Courbet found themselves jailed and/or exiled from France for this involvement.  Avant-garde types, including artists, are good at originating new ideas and ideals but probably not so good at the practicalities of implementing them when it comes to imposing changes on a public who is likely to prefer tradition.  Again, it seems to me to be a conscious choice of Impressionists to turn from politics in subject matter.  Brightening up their palettes with oil pigments from convenient tubes and using a technique of loose brushwork that could blur any remaining unpleasant elements of the past into a happy present seems a more likely avenue of forgetfulness.  Impressionists who painted a majority of interiors did tend to flatten the depth of the picture plane, like past modernists (a weird sounding phrase), but landscape painters such as Monet used quite a bit of natural depth.  His technique of painting color rather than strict form and his loose brushwork usually created an energetic, happy mood.  No one living then was likely to forget the desperation of the past but to believe in a better future they did have to move forward. 

It is interesting to contrast the paintings that depict the festivities of 30 June 1878 By Claude Monet and Edouard Manet.  Monet paints the celebrating crowd below and the blue sky above fenced and presented by a patriotic swirl of the tricolor with great energy and an evident optimistic mood.  References to the past are buried in the bustle of the present and yet it is the memory of the past that made the event important.  Edouard Manet  on the other hand had been around longer.  His The Rue Mosnier with Flags shows the celebration in a different light.  Reconstruction is still taking place, as symbolized by the ladder in the foreground.  The veteran of a battle, an amputee in the left foreground, shuns the crowds that likely make his crutches nearly useless and hobbles down the shady side of the street.  The scene is starkly lit, the flags are dots in the distance and other figures in the scene are bleached to de-emphasize them.  Manet had been thumbing his nose at the Academe and salon system since the 1860’s when he was flattening his picture plane and painting improper subject matter like the immodest nude women in Olympia and The Luncheon on the Grass.  In this later work of 1878 Manet is using looser brush strokes and a deeper perspective (such as Monet might employ as an Impressionist landscape painter) but he cannot resist the call of realism with its deeper, more political meanings.  He has not forgotten the past and never wants his fellow Parisians to either, whatever their mood during the party.