soomcoagxhistory

[soomcoagxhistory]

Stéphane Mallarmé

French / Poet, Critic / Symbolism 

- major French symbolist poet - his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century. ex. Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. - fusions between poetry and the other arts

Mallarmé's late poetry is one of the earliest examples of "concrete poetry," poetry that relies as much on its appearance on the page as the sound of its words.

the 'pure sound' aspect of his poetry has been the subject of musical analysis and has inspired musical compositions. These phonetic ambiguities are very difficult to reproduce in a translation which must be faithful to the meaning of the words.

[soomcoagxhistory]

Henri De Toulouse Lautrec

French / Painting, printmaking, drawing, illustration, draughting / post-impressionism, Art Nouveau

Paris in the late 19th century  enticing, elegant, provocative images of the modern, sometimes decadent, affairs of those times

Physically unable (had genetic disorder) to participate in many activities enjoyed by males his age, Toulouse-Lautrec immersed himself in art. He became an important Post-Impressionist painter, art nouveauillustrator, and lithographer, and, through his works, recorded many details of the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec contributed a number of illustrations to the magazine Le Rire during the mid-1890s 

Toulouse-Lautrec was mocked for his short stature and physical appearance, which led him to abuse alcohol / died from alcoholism

In his less-than-20-year career, Toulouse-Lautrec created:737 canvased paintings

275 watercolours

363 prints and posters

5,084 drawings

some ceramic and stained-glass work

an unknown number of lost works

[soomcoagxhistory]

Gustave Courbet

“To create living art—this is my goal.”

- French (1819-1877) / painter, scupter / realism  - preferring to develop his own style by studying the paintings of Spanish, Flemish and French masters in the Louvre, and painting copies of their work. - abandoned literary influences, choosing instead to base his paintings on observed reality. - Trips to the Netherlands and Belgium in 1846–47 strengthened Courbet's belief that painters should portray the life around them, as Rembrandt, Hals and other Dutch masters had

Courbet believed that "the artists of one century [are] basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century ..."Instead, he maintained that the only possible source for living art is the artist's own experience. 

He courted controversy by addressing social issues in his work, and by painting subjects that were considered vulgar, such as the rural bourgeoisie, peasants, and working conditions of the poor.

For Courbet realism dealt not with the perfection of line and form, but entailed spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist while portraying the irregularities in nature. He depicted the harshness in life, and in so doing challenged contemporary academic ideas of art.

Eventually, the public grew more interested in the new Realist approach, and the lavish, decadent fantasy of Romanticism lost popularity.

 Courbet insisted on depicting his own life in his art 

“...in our so very civilized society it is necessary for me to live the life of a savage.”

Realist manifesto

Courbet wrote a Realist manifesto for the introduction to the catalogue of this independent, personal exhibition, echoing the tone of the period's political manifestos. In it he asserts his goal as an artist "to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch according to my own estimation."

—

The title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed upon the men of 1830. Titles have never given a true idea of things: if it were otherwise, the works would be unnecessary.

Without expanding on the greater or lesser accuracy of a name which nobody, I should hope, can really be expected to understand, I will limit myself to a few words of elucidation in order to cut short the misunderstandings.

I have studied the art of the ancients and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I no longer wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other; nor, furthermore, was it my intention to attain the trivial goal of "art for art's sake". No! I simply wanted to draw forth, from a complete acquaintance with tradition, the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality.

To know in order to do, that was my idea. To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my time, according to my own estimation; to be not only a painter, but a man as well; in short, to create living art – this is my goal. (Gustave Courbet, 1855)