Favorite Art This Quarter

Week Ten: Post Nine

My Favorite Art This Quarter and Some Influences

I think that my favorite styles of art that we have studied this quarter and the styles that are most influential in my own art are the same.  First, I liked Realism for bringing new subject matter into the art world.  It’s strange to me that the bourgeois class felt so threatened by looking at a painted image of something they could have seen on the street or by the roadside at any time if their noses weren’t so far in the air.  I have an aversion to politics and yet I see it as my duty as a voter to keep up with developments and try to make good choices at election time.  Those who were well off in the early 18^th century were being reminded of their duty to the poor by the artists who used the Realist style and the bourgeoisie didn’t like it at all.   With communist and socialist ideas being explored it was time for artists to reflect the experimental politics of the era.  Realist artists wanted to portray an unembellished version of modern happenings and people.  Manet’s nudes (The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia) were unaccompanied by cherubs and often addressed the viewer with a direct stare.  Courbet’s laborers (The Stone Breakers) worked in ragged and dirty garb, not the latest style.  The artist analyzed the subject matter in quite a clinical way and presented what he/she felt would engender a reaction in the viewer even if that reaction was horror or disgust.  My version of realism is to draw what I see; this may be one of the traditional realms of a female artist but it is what I like to do.

Another favorite style of mine is Impressionism.  I like that it is in some ways a reaction to Realism.  Realists wanted to show the dirt and grime of the poor to change the priorities of the rich, then the pendulum swung a bit too far and artists ended up in high government posts during the time of the Commune.  It seems that even those with the highest ideals and the best of intentions can still be corrupted by power and destroy what they intended to improve.  Impressionists use non-threatening subject matter, bright colors and visible brushwork to create beautiful paintings and glide the viewer beyond the ugliness of the past with pleasing, indistinct images.  It is a type of art that celebrates, heals and renews the life of humans and of the Earth as it often depicts landscapes, parties and leisure time activities (Monet, Impression: Sunrise, Morisot, Summer’s Day).  Monet often didn’t include human figures in his work and I identify with his approach since I like to draw mostly botanical subjects.  Much of Monet’s later work was done in his own garden and this is also one of my favorite spots, along with the nearby woods and river. 

I also like the anything goes freedom of Post-modernism.  The work by Kehinde Wiley, Prince Tommasso Francesco of Savoy-Carignano (2006) references Anthony Van Dyck’s Prince Thomas Francis of Savoy-Carignan (1634) and I think of Jan Brueghel and other Dutch flower painters from the 17^th century and also 19^th century floral still lives when I draw plants.  My work is unlikely to go as far as that of Georgia O’Keeffe’s when it comes to seeing flowers in a new way but her work is also a good Modernist style to reference for me.