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Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849, Oil on Canvas, 4.9' x 8.5', Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany (until 1945)

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"Realism: The First Great Avant-Garde Movement of the 19th Century" (Dr. E)

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"Realism: The First Great Avant-Garde Movement of the 19th Century" (Dr. E)

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Source: Stokstad and Cothren, Art History, Ch. 31, Mid-To Late Nineteenth-Century Art in Europe and the United States, "Realism and the Avant-Garde"

"In reaction to the rigidity of academic training, some French artists began to consider themselves members of an avant-garde...Avant-garde artists saw themselves as working in advance of an increasingly bourgeois society" (pg 972). Upon following the Revolution of 1848 and the government's brutal slaying of 10,000 working class citizens in response, French artists took it upon themselves to bring the "brutal truths of life" to attention. At a time in which French society was in a fragile, tempestuous state, "...a new intellectual movement, known as Realism, originated...(S&C). Gustave Courbet was one of the first French artists to paint in the genre of Realism and claim association with avant-gardism. Courbet's first avant-garde painting, The Stone Breakers, contains a strong political stand point in regards to social class and status. Within his piece, two working class men are seen breaking stone to build a roadway. This real life inspired scene is depicted on a vastly large canvas, referencing the academic tradition of displaying heroic subjects upon monumental canvases. This strategy by Courbet "...asserts that peasant laborers should be venerated as heroes" (pg 973). This bold leap into a direction of revolutionary rebellion would soon lead the way for several other artists and subgenres of avant-garde-inspired paintings.

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Edouard Manet, Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass), 1863, Oil on Canvas, 7' x 8'8", Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France 

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Salon of the Rejected Ones: Success from Scandal 

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Salon of the Rejected Ones: Success from Scandal 

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Source: Stokstad and Cothren, Art History, Ch. 31, Mid-To Late Nineteenth-Century Art in Europe and the United States, "Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe"

"...Manet had by the early 1860s developed a strong commitment to Realism and modernity...Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe scandalized contemporary viewers all the way up to Napoleon III himself, provoking a critical avalanche that mixed shock with bewilderment. Ironically, the resulting succes de scandale ('success from scandal') helped establish Manet's career as a radical, avant-garde, modern artist" (pg 976). More than a decade following Courbet's The Stone Breakers, Edouard Manet created a vastly large scene that suggested a theme of "'immorality''". Upon the canvas, Manet painted "...a suburban picnic featuring two fully dressed bourgeois gentlemen seated alongside completely naked women, with another scantily dressed woman in the background" (S&C). Original viewers of Manet's piece assumed that the women depicted in this artwork were prostitutes offering services to the middle-class men sitting within their presence. This unethical ambiance sparked controversy due to Manet making suggestions to other nude paintings such as Birth of Venus and The Pastoral Concert or Allegory on the Invention of Pastoral Poetry, both of which whom were seen as acceptable forms of nudity due to their reference of classical, mythological context. Due to Manet's "modern interpretation of the scene...combined with his modern style, [it] was [seen as] intentionally provocative" (pg 977). Manet using classical based references to convey the more hidden aspects of middle-class habits and vices makes the original viewers uncomfortable. This disturbance in viewers is exactly what Manet wants as he is based upon a foundation of Realism.

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Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1872, Oil on Canvas, 19" x 24 3/8", Musee Marmottan, Paris, France 

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Source: Stokstad and Cothren, Art History, Ch. 31, Mid-To Late Nineteenth-Century Art in Europe and the United States, "Impressionism"

"The generation of French painters maturing around 1870 continued to paint modern urban subjects, but their perspective differed from that of Manet and the Realist. Instead of challenging social commentary, these younger artists painted pretty pictures of the upper middle class as leisure in the countryside and in the city..."(pg 987). Only nine years later and the idea of avant-gardism began to become even more avant-garde. Artists began to gradually shift from using the canvas as a political tool to critique French society to now instead using the canvas to critique the idea of conventional brushwork. This evolution of artwork becoming less politically powered came due to a sudden horror that rocked Paris. "In Paris, for two months between March and May 1871, workers rose up and established the Commune, a working-class city government, the suppression of which led to an estimated 20,000 dead and 7,500 imprisoned...in artists' circles, the fear of being branded as an enemy of the state sent a chill through everyone. After 1871, overt political commentary in French art diminished even more, and the challenge of the avant-garde was expressed increasingly as an insular stylistic rebellion" (S&C). This caused artists to revert to using their artistic approach to the canvas as a sense of rebellion rather than the subjects within it. This led to more loose, texturized brushstrokes which were referred to as "'tongue-lickings'" and color palettes that paid more attention to the relationship between hues and light rather than reality and accuracy.

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Andre Derain, Mountains at Collioure, 1905, Oil on Canvas, 32" x 39 1/2", The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 

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"The Fauves: Wild Beasts of Color" (S&C)

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"The Fauves: Wild Beasts of Color" (S&C)

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Source: Stokstad and Cothren, Art History, Ch. 32, Modern Art in Europe and the Americas, 1900-1950, "The Fauves: Wild Beasts of Color"

"Paintings by Derain, Matisse, and Maurice de Vlamick (1876-1958) exhibited in 1905 were filled with such explosive colors and blunt brushwork that the critic Louis Vauxcelles described the young painters as fauves ('wild beasts'), the French term by which they soon became known. These artists took the French tradition of color and strong brushwork to new heights of intensity and expressive power, and entirely rethought the picture's surface" (pg 1019). More than 30 years later when the idea of loose brushstrokes began to become popularized, avant-gardism became more rebellious than ever before by combining the juxtaposition of expressive daubs and eye-catching colors. "Derain described his colors as 'sticks of dynamite,' and his stark juxtapositions of complementary hues as 'deliberate disharmonies' (S&C). This unique combination of color and form "...generates a visual energy that positively pulses from the painting" (pg 1020). Upon reaching this point in avant-gardism, artists appeared to abandon the idea of depicting a realistic and accurate world upon their canvas through definitive linework. Instead, they focused on depicting a change in form and lines by contrasting colors side by side. This adventure of straying farther and farther away from realistic and accurate form eventually leads to more subgenres of avant-gardism such as cubism, primitivism, and abstract expressionism.