Judging from the development of European painting history, it is in the works of impressionist painters that swaying sunshine and subtle shadows are introduced into the picture, and painting becomes fresh, bright and full of vitality. The artist's pursuit of truth reached its peak in the impressionist era, and then began to decline. From MANET to Cezanne, European painting tradition is self-denial and self-perfection, which constitutes the development framework of the whole western modern painting. Impressionist painters were misunderstood or even ridiculed at the beginning of artistic activities. Their common activities did not last long, but they had a far-reaching impact on western art, affecting music and literature. By the beginning of the 20th century, Impressionism had become a popular art school. Until today, impressionist painting is still more popular with audiences all over the world than other schools in the history of painting. This exhibition will use the works of Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas or Cezanne to introduce the evolution of French Impressionism: its beginning, development and its influence on later painting art. Visitors can not only observe the diversity of themes handled by these outstanding painters (involving landscapes, still lives and portraits), but also observe the development of their painting experience. The exhibition of some representative works makes this exhibition very rare. There are 565,438+0 impressionist works on display in China this time, and the main French impressionists can be said to include all of them-Monet 65,438+065,438+0, Sisley 5, Degas 4, Renoir 4, Manet 3, pissarro 7, Fontaine-latour, Mo Lisuo, Basil and others also have works to meet the audience in China. Among them are Manet's Piccolo Boy and Barmaid, Degas' Dance Class, Cafe (also known as Absinthe), portraits of young women, Monet's Rouen Cathedral and Water Lily, Renoir's Bust, The Effect of Sunshine, and pissarro's Pontoise Elmy Tashi.
Impressionist painting was introduced to China in the 1920s, but it was not until the end of 1970s that China audiences could see some impressionist works. In the year of French culture, impressionist paintings were displayed intensively, which was the first in the history of China's foreign artistic exchange. The 5l works that met the audience in China this time belong to French national treasures, most of which are from Orsay Museum. The Orsay Museum is a national museum specializing in the collection of modern works of art.. Located on the banks of the Seine River in Paris, it is a must for art pilgrims from all over the world to visit Paris. For the first time, the Orsay Museum has produced so many outstanding impressionist works and sent them to China, far away from the other side of the ocean. This is a century-long art festival. This exhibition hopes to provide people with an opportunity to build a bridge between Chinese and French cultures, understand the similarities and differences between Chinese and French cultures, and share complementary things between them.
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Impressionism came into being in France in the second half of19th century. A group of painters centered on MANET, such as Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, pissarro, etc. Under the slogan of opposing academic art, he carried out artistic innovation with an innovative attitude and entered the French painting world. 1874, they held their first exhibition in Paris, which had a great social response. One of the exhibits was Monet's oil painting Impression Sunrise, which was attacked by academic school. Critics nicknamed these painters "Impressionists", hence the name Impressionist painting.
Impressionism emphasizes the painter's feelings and impressions of objective things, opposes the academic school's conformism and advocates artistic innovation. In painting skills, light and color are discussed, and the method of depicting objects with external light is studied. It is recognized that the change of color is caused by colored light, and the color changes with the influence of observation position, different light States and environment. At the same time, this scientific principle is applied to painting. They walked out of the studio and into nature, sketched directly in the sun, and showed subtle color changes according to observation and direct feelings. This is a great revolution in the history of painting, and it also has a great influence on modern art later. Because impressionist painting rarely reflects the theme of human life, the theme and content of creation are greatly limited.
Manet (1832 ~ 1883) was a great painter who played an important role in the revolution of painting in the second half of the 9th century. Although he is closely related to impressionist painters and does not participate in impressionist exhibitions, impressionist painters always create new painting theories and works centered on MANET.
Manet was born in a wealthy family of judges in 1832. Because of his love of art, he gave up his career as a high official and became a painter. Manet was the first painter to break the traditional tan tone and make the picture bright and fresh with the help of external light. Influenced by classical art, he has always maintained a grand and solemn spirit in his works. His paintings have high realistic skills in modeling, but they have not developed to the extent that some impressionist painters later decomposed the colors of objects. His handling of color is relatively complete, and each color block is harmonious, soft and bright, giving people a transparent and fresh feeling. The boy who plays the flute is MANET's famous work. In the overall dark tone, highlight several bright colors to make it more loud and dazzling. His other masterpiece, Olympia, also adopted such a means of expression.
Monet (1840 ~ 1926) is a leading figure of impressionism. 1874, he initiated and organized the first Impressionist Art Exhibition, and his oil painting Impression Sunrise caused repercussions in the exhibition, thus making the name "Impressionism" formally appear.
Impression sunrise shows the painter's feelings and impressions of the fleeting scene of "sunrise water" What is shown in the painting is that in the hazy morning fog of Tianshui, a red sun Ran Ran rises, and the boats in the water and the scenery on the shore are easily outlined in blue-green, and all the objects in the whole picture are integrated.
In Monet's works, he pays great attention to the exploration of color field and ignores the realism of object and form. Pay attention to the use of light and color to express the instant impression and pursue the independent beauty of color relationship in painting. He was the first painter who really emphasized external light sketching. Almost all his works are done by outdoor sketching, and his attitude is very serious. In order to maintain the authenticity of the impression, it is often painted in the morning. If you don't finish painting, you will wait until the same time the next day to continue painting until you finish painting. He also often draws the color changes of objects at different times and under different light in front of a scene. For example, the oil paintings Haystack and Lyon Cathedral are the works often mentioned by artists in this color experiment. His works, after careful consideration, pursue the subtle change effect of instantaneous light color, which is unprecedented. This artistic pursuit is particularly prominent in Monet's oil painting Water Lily in his later years. Monet is the oldest impressionist painter. In his later years, people realized the value of impressionist painting, which also made him live a happy life in his later years.
Degas (1834 ~ 19 17) is an active activist and an important member of impressionist painters, who is famous for depicting dancers and bathing girls. Degas, the son of a banker, is well-off and well-educated.
Degas was influenced by strict classical art in his early years and cultivated his feelings of loving traditional art, so he has always been a painter who insists on strict modeling among impressionist painters. Influenced by MANET, he began to pay attention to the study of color, and participated in the Impressionist Art Exhibition, becoming a member of the impressionist painters with unique style. Degas has always been interested in the confusing pursuit of sports, especially the dancers under the stage lights and the scenes on the racetrack, which are extremely vivid. He often observes the objects calmly in the backstage and in the box, silently writes down the instantaneous movements of the actors when they dance, vividly shows the gentle movements and vivid gestures of the dancers, and more successfully, he conveys the feelings under the stage lights very vividly. Degas' representative works include Dancer on the Stage and Woman Ironing Clothes.
Renoir (1841~1919) is an important impressionist painter. 184 1 was born in a poor tailor's family and used to paint on ceramic utensils for a living. He is optimistic and simple in nature, loves life and nature, and has an extremely keen artistic sensibility to the beauty of man and nature. Renoir mainly painted portraits and nudes of women. His paintings are always full of joy, and the characters are portrayed with unspeakable softness and smile. At the same time, he tried to use impressionism in painting and achieved ideal results. His figure paintings are lively and colorful.
Renoir's paintings about girls and children also have high artistic value. The children in his works are naive and childlike, and the girls he painted can convey a quiet and elegant modality. The Portrait of a Girl is one of his representative works.
Renoir's works give people a feeling of jumping in the use of brushstrokes. He often likes to use all kinds of red paintings from shallow to deep. The characters in the painting are portrayed as very carefree and happy, full of youthful beauty, just like a piece of praise and lyrical music, which can make people feel that life is so beautiful and full of romantic feelings. His works "Lunch on a Cruise", "Dance in the Street of Biscuit Shop" and "Box" fully reflect his artistic characteristics.
Pissarro (1830 ~ 1903) is an important impressionist painter. Pissarro was born on the small island of St. Thomas in the French Antilles. His father is a small grocer. When he was young, he worked as a shop assistant. Because his paintings are cool, he left his hometown island at the age of 25 and came to Paris, which is famous as the art capital. The works of Koro and Miller have a great influence on him, and he firmly believes that the only master that art can follow is nature. Pissarro began to paint in outdoor light earlier than other impressionists. He often said, "Draw faithfully according to nature under vivid outdoor light!" " "
Pissarro was poor all his life, but he always lived with a cheerful and open-minded face. He likes rural life very much and paints everything he sees, without exaggeration or whitewashing. On the screen, he often uses saturated colors and delicate brushwork to describe objects, which has a sincere artistic charm. His representative works include The Red Roof of Fantovaz and The Avenue of Mon martel.
Seurat (1859 ~ 189 1), a latecomer of impressionism, is unique among impressionists. Seurat guides artistic practice according to the principles of colorimetry. He believes that under the illumination of light, the colors of all objects and images are split. To truly express this divided color, different and pure color points and color blocks must be juxtaposed. The works under the guidance of this theory are called "stippling method", which forms "neo-impressionism painting", also known as "stippling school". Based on scientific theory and rationality, the new impressionism of architecture restores the concreteness and realism of objects in painting in some aspects, and explores the color analysis. However, due to excessive emphasis on rules and regulations, painting has lost its valuable intuition and vividness.
Sunday afternoon in Big Bowl Island is Seurat's masterpiece, which took three years to complete. The painter adopts the form of fine pen and small dots, with large green as the main tone, mixed with purple, blue, red, yellow and other color dots, so that the picture has rich color changes and complementary color contrast in some parts and is coordinated as a whole.
After impressionism, another artistic trend of thought, represented by Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin, appeared, which was called "post-impressionism". Post-impressionism is not satisfied with the "objectivism" of impressionism and the one-sided pursuit of external light color, but instead emphasizes the expression of the author's self-feeling, subjective feeling and emotion. In artistic expression, "post-impressionism" attaches importance to the relationship between form, color and volume, emphasizing that artistic image should be different from the material image of life, objective image should be transformed with the author's subjective feelings, and "subjective objectivity" should be expressed. They respect the achievements of Impressionism in external light and color, but they don't pursue external light and pay attention to the concreteness, stability and internal structure of matter. Post-impressionist painting has a great influence on the development of modern painting school.
Cezanne (1839 ~ 1906) is an important post-impressionist painter and the father of modern painting. Cezanne was introduced by pissarro to join Impressionism and participated in the first Impressionist Art Exhibition. He didn't stick to the impressionist light and color analysis, took pains to capture fleeting natural phenomena, and established his own artistic methods and styles.
After long-term observation and practice, Cezanne proposed that natural objects can be summarized into cylindrical, conical and spherical geometric shapes. For human beings, nature is mainly not a plane but a depth, so we should pay attention to the hierarchical relationship between the morphological structure and color of natural scenery. He believes that "there are no lines, no light and shade, only the contrast between colors." The volume of an object image is represented by an accurate tonal relationship. "He is very good at using color to deal with the sense of space in the picture. The scenery in his works, no matter far or near, is very fresh and bright, and at the same time shows a distinct sense of perspective and space. This feeling is not expressed by the perspective line and composition of the object on the screen, but by the color of the object and the relationship between colors. Color replaces volume, and color relationship replaces light and shade. He is making a model with colors. As we know, the difficulty lies in finding the accurate color and the harmonious relationship between colors, and Cezanne has successfully overcome this difficulty.
Most of Cezanne's works are the embodiment of his own artistic thought. His still life paintings, landscape paintings and figure paintings all show a strong sense of geometry, ignoring the accuracy of the texture and modeling of objects, and emphasizing the heavy and steady sense of mass and the great overall relationship between objects. Cezanne's works do not blindly copy reality, but seek the harmony of various relationships.
Cezanne emphasized the sense of volume and space, skillfully arranged and used colors, handled the modeling structure of objects and consciously deformed them. These artistic methods of pursuing formal beauty have had a great influence on later modern schools. Therefore, Cezanne was respected by many painters who were keen on modern art in his later years and was honored as the "father of modern art".
Cezanne's representative works include Still Life and Mount St. Victor Neil.
Van Gogh (1853 ~ 1890) is an important post-impressionist painter, a Dutch with poor family life. When he was young, he worked in many professions, such as art dealer, teacher and missionary. He began his career as a painter when he was nearly 30 years old.
Because of his rich life experience and deep affection for working people, he is keen to express their ordinary and hard working life in his art. Most of the early oil paintings used realistic methods to describe the rural scenery and people's working life, and the traditional dark tone was the main color expression. 1886, Van Gogh came to Paris and was attracted by the wonderful and enthusiastic light, shadow and color effects in impressionist paintings. He began to change the original painting method and devoted himself to the color expression of impressionist painting and other forms of experiments with great enthusiasm. From then on, Van Gogh's oil paintings began to become bright, with bright and burning colors, as well as touching, continuous and wavy strokes, which constituted the characteristics of his paintings. He uses the depicted object as a medium to express his strong subjective feelings and his unique artistic skills, thus expressing his subjective feelings and passions. He developed the impressionist artistic method, especially the method of shaping the color and shape of things, to the point of being more independent of tradition. Van Gogh's art before his death was not recognized by the world, but later, people gradually understood and recognized his artistic creation. His works are full of yearning for goodness and beauty and freedom of creative imagination, especially accepted by the later developed "Fauvism" and "Expressionism" painters. To this day, Van Gogh still lives in the art world.
Van Gogh's representative works include: The Potato Eater in his early works, Sunflower, Starry Night and Postman in his later works.
Gauguin (1848 ~ 1903) is an important post-impressionist painter. He was born in Paris and worked as a sailor and a shop assistant when he was young. Later, he gave up his business and devoted most of his time to painting. At first, he was led to the road of impressionist painting by the impressionist painter pissarro. Soon, he changed his painting style and began to create a style that emphasized the artist's subjective fantasy and more decorative significance. He is tired of the bustling and controversial city life and yearns for a simple natural and lonely lifestyle. Gauguin gave up his rich life, left Paris, crossed the ocean to Tahiti, a tropical island south of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean, and began to explore his own independent artistic style. His most important works were finished here. Here, he discovered the deep feelings he received from his mother for the indigenous people in his childhood. Gauguin showed the original beauty and undeveloped tropical nature with great enthusiasm, and showed the simple and simple life of indigenous people far away from the noise of civilization. He adopted the solemn, steady, peaceful and rich pattern decoration style in ancient Egyptian art, and pursued simple, naive and heavy structure. In terms of color, starting from the requirements of formal aesthetic feeling, he pays attention to the layout and overall effect of color blocks, arranges them through subjective creation, simplifies the relationship between colors, uses more pure colors, pursues a harmonious leap or contrast, and shows a strong sense of decoration. Gauguin advocated that artists should not only express objective nature, but also explore the mysterious heart in their thoughts and express subjective things, which inspired a group of modernist painters like Cezanne and Van Gogh.