Modernity and Caillebotte

Week Five Post Five: Modernity and Masculinity in 19^th Century France

Option One

Caillebotte was a wealthy man from a wealthy family.  He supported Impressionists and exhibited with them and yet his works are different; he has obviously had formal art training and often employs academic techniques.  The brushwork is slightly Impressionistic- a bit looser than the strict academician might employ- but it’s his subject matter that usually drew the most disapproval from traditionalists.  As a modernist, Caillebotte painted what he saw around him.  Whether that’s a celebration of modern life or a critique of it depends not so much on the actual subject being depicted as it does on the attitude of the artist.  The artist creates a general mood through shifts in lighting, color and perspective but his real mindset is impossible to guess from the temporal distance of over 100 years after his death.

 We do, however, know some of the context in which we might place Caillebotte’s work.  In Luncheon (1876) Caillebotte may be showing the shift of his family’s dynamics after the death of his father in 1874.  His mother is placed at the top of the expanse of up-tilted table being waited on by a servant to display her authority.  Caillebotte’s brother appears to the left, absorbed with his food, and yet is in a more companionable place next to the implied presence of the artist behind his plate.  I don’t think this family is unusual for the time.  Everyone has their own place in the hierarchy and they don’t interact with each other all that much because the type of companionship in a family does not include the same type of interactions that occur among friends.  Family members expect to always be together, so connected by life-long association and blood lines that they don’t need or want interaction at all times.  This is a kind of isolation by choice that has been going on a very long time within family dynamics.  As recorded here by Caillebotte the modernist, it’s not the subject matter or even the lighting that tends to isolate the figures, it’s the perspective.  The artist may feel that his place is at the bottom of the table (read hierarchy) but he doesn’t seem to be protesting his place only showing us where he is. 

It is striking to compare Luncheon and a later work of 1879, Still Life, painted after the deaths of his brother and mother.  The same tableware appears as objects and subjects but with no people to use them.  This work seems almost cheery with its bright colors but placed in context with events in the artist’s life the lack of the family to use it makes the glassware look forlorn.  Caillebotte is being the modernist/realist again and painting what he saw on the table on a sunlit day during his time of mourning.  He may have called the work “Still Life” simply because his own life was at a standstill at this time or he may just not have liked to come up with fancy titles. 

A recurring theme in Caillebott’s work is the male figure looking out a window or from one type of space into another with some railing or barrier between.  This may be a more relevant subject when it comes to modern life and feelings of isolation.  As society became more industrialized more barriers arose between indoor, domestic spaces and the outdoors where all classes and kinds of people and animals might interact.  Indoor spaces could represent order and outdoor or other spaces chaos.  We might crave domestic safety but be bored and isolated in that space.  Hanging on that edge allows us the safety of the domestic while having a view of the more dangerous chaotic elements outside such as in Young Man at his Window from 1875.  When we feel too isolated we join the chaos for a while with the surety of the domestic sphere to retreat to for our more vulnerable moments like bathing.  Caillebotte’s outdoor subjects seem to have a more dynamic, stimulated feel than either his indoor subjects or those scenes painted from the viewpoint of a window.  In Pont de l’Europe Caillebotte has men, a woman a dog and a barrier one male uses to view from one type of chaos into another all incorporated.  All the human figures are depicted as living in their own space in the instant of time of the painting but there is room for interaction to take place in its future.  One man turns to talk to the woman, the man on the railing shouts to a friend below, the dog finds his master in one of the background figures, etc.

The inclusion of outsiders in the domestic space must have also been quite exciting to paint.  In Floorscrapers Caillebotte brings the chaos of interactions with the lower classes inside.  It’s no wonder this painting was treated by some critics as if the artist had suddenly introduced a herd of wild beasts into a dining room.  Modern workers enter a upper class home to do their work, temporarily destroying the order and safety usually to be found there and blurring that line between chaos and order.  The workers evidence the impact of their jobs on their bodies and do not conform to heroic academic specifications.  The perspective is again tilted and the lighting set so that the floor seems to be the real star of this show.  As a modernist Caillebotte again is painting what he sees and finding that mood of tension between outsiders and insiders, chaos and order to be his inspiration.  That the tension exists and is of enough interest to be painted leads me to think of Caillebotte’s paintings as a celebration of modern life even though he is seeing and representing both the up and down sides of Modernity.