The influence of color
/kloc-As the center of world art, France in the 0/9th century saw a hundred schools of thought contend and a hundred flowers blossom, and the artistic debate between schools was extremely fierce, which greatly promoted the development of French art at that time. The dispute between the academic school headed by neoclassicism and the romantic artists has made the artist's creative consciousness return from classical indifference to personal perceptual knowledge. In 1930s, the debate between realism and non-realism (classicism and romanticism) made artists give up their dreams of illusory ideal world and return to real life. Their artistic creation should reflect the characteristics of the times. The collision between these art schools has created a group of young art rebels. They no longer regard the salon exhibition guarded by the academic school as the sole purpose of their artistic creation. They began to re-examine art. Encouraged by the spirit of their predecessors, they went out of the studio to examine nature, abandoned the backward creative methods, and used the new scientific and technological achievements brought by the industrial revolution to uncover an artistic revolution with great influence. Impressionism is the result of this revolution. No painting school is as diverse as Impressionism, Pre-Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, which has brought unprecedented innovation to modern art./kloc-Since the beginning of the 9th century, the American economy has taken off rapidly, and its territory has expanded from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The vast and wild nature has aroused Americans' strong national pride, and also spawned the development of landscape paintings depicting the American mainland. More and more American artists go abroad and join the process of globalization. Impressionism was as popular in America as Paris, the art capital of the world at that time. The influence of technology is mainly reflected in color as the main expression language of artistic creation.
Color is the most commonly used artistic expression language in modern art, and the independence of color is a revolutionary innovation for the classical painting system. From the prehistoric cave murals in France to the Van Eyck era, and even hundreds of years after the oil painting was born because of the improvement of materials, the role of color is to assist sketch to present the original appearance of objects more truly. We call this period the intrinsic color period, and the intrinsic color is the color of the object itself. Painters in this period did not consider the influence of light on the color of objects for several reasons. First of all, the workplace of classical painters is usually indoors. Under normal circumstances, the light is very stable. Even in some rainy days, the painter can complete the color of the object according to the rules he has mastered in his daily creation. Secondly, the production of a complete classical work takes a long time and the production process is very complicated. It takes at least half a year or more from sketching to canvas or sketchpad to covering and dyeing layer by layer (similar to China's meticulous painting), so when artists paint the color of an object, they basically regard the color of the object under a stable light source as the inherent color of the object. This way of observing and painting is very similar to one of the six methods, such as "color with the class" proposed by China Sheikh. For example, if you draw a red dress, by mixing white and black in the red pigment, you can distinguish its light and dark changes and apply them to the light and dark parts of the dress respectively. Color does not have its own independent system, but is attached to the sketch relationship. Of course, it's not that artists didn't pay attention to color in this period, but that many talented artists gradually found that color has a relationship of complementary colors in cold and warm in their long-term artistic practice. For example, I saw the prophet in Michelangelo's zenith mural in a foreign language album with very beautiful printing quality. The dark part of the yellow robe he wore obviously contained a lot of purple components, but at that time, these artists did not study the reasons for this phenomenon too much, but only appeared in large numbers in the creative process. The creative way of the inherent color system continued until impressionism. At the beginning of the founding of the United States, American art basically followed the pattern of European classical painting. A large number of European immigrants brought only some painting forms with practical functions (decorating houses and commemorating ancestors), which were the combination of European academic style and American local genre painting, so American painting in this period also belonged to the classical color system.
French romanticism, especially Jericho and Delacroix, attached great importance to the expression of color. They "emphasize that romantic artists emphasize emotion and fantasy, not rationality, emphasize individuality, and emphasize that color is more important than sketch, so as to overthrow all classical situations and laws." [[1] Quoted from Li Chun's Course of Western Art History, page 258, line 7] Shaanxi People's Fine Arts Publishing House [1] They attach importance to the use of light in the picture, but do not associate light with color, and do not consider the influence of light on color. Only in comparison with classical painting did they begin to pay more attention to color. Classical color systems do not pay attention to light, but they express light by sketching the relationship between light and shade, not by color. Impressionism holds that the inherent color of an object is idealized, because the object changes with the light, and the light changes all the time, completely breaking the classical description of the color of an object under a fixed light source in an ideal state. The use of color has been promoted to an unprecedented height for the first time, and color has become the main means for artists to express light. Become an artistic language independent of the sketch system.
Among many factors in painting (composition, sketch and color), color itself is the most abstract. Kandinsky said: "Color is a way that directly affects the mind. Color is the key of the piano, the eyes are the hammer, and the heart is the piano full of strings. Color plucks the strings of the mind through visual channels. Then the harmony of colors can only be based on the principle of purposefully stirring the human soul. " [[2] Argument quoted from Kandinsky's Lines and Faces [2] Written by Kandinsky and translated by Li Xin into Renmin University of China Press] [2] When talking about the relationship between shape and color, he said: "The basic relationship between the two is the standardization of color and shape, while strengthening the visual effect of shape." For example, in classical realistic painting, when drawing an apple, the spatial position of the apple is emphasized by contrast between light and dark, and the relationship between the front and back of the apple is strengthened by virtual and real edge lines. That is to say, the sketch factor can already show the characteristics of the apple, so the visual effect of the apple is enhanced after color filling, just like the black-and-white photos and color photos of the apple, which can better affect our visual needs? It must be a color photo. A rosy apple can arouse our appetite, and appetite can arouse our spiritual needs through visual perception. We would rather eat an ugly apple than a black apple, so color is related to the spiritual world of human beings and is more abstract than shape. For example, the "red" color block is hard to say what it is, but it can give people a "bloody feeling". How to express "bloody feeling" simply by "shape" Kandinsky divides painting into two kinds: one is material and the other is spiritual. Material painting touches the viewer through visual nerve stimulation, which is external; Spiritual painting is an inner sound produced by the excitement of the mind. He attributed the former to the characteristics of realistic art and regarded the latter as the core of abstract art. " When we see impressionist works, we should first be moved by the colors they painted, and the specific image of the object has been included in the colors. They show the sketch relationship by changing the lightness and purity of the color of the object, the space of the object by changing the temperature, and the reality by using the complementary color relationship. When Monet described his painting state, he said: "The scenery I saw is no longer houses, trees and hills, but a picture composed of blocks of different colors and shapes. " [3]
The independence of color is not entirely attributed to impressionist artists, but these artists used the new scientific research results at that time to apply these optical theories to their own artistic creation, which can be said to be a perfect combination of science and art. They verified that "light" is the real reason for human eyes to perceive objects. /kloc-At the end of 0/8th century, Newton divided white light into seven colors through a prism, and thought that colors were caused by light with different wavelengths. The famous writer Goethe accidentally discovered the existence of complementary colors. He doesn't completely agree with Newton's theory in color theory. He thinks that color is only related to light and shade. Newton's view looks at color in isolation, excluding the role of observers, while Goethe sees another relationship. Goethe said: "In all my plans, what interests me most is a new theory about light, shadow and color. If I am not mistaken, in the study of nature and art, sometimes even a revolution must take place. "Goethe's color theory, until Einstein's theory of relativity, especially Planck's quantum theory and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, made optical research an independent discipline.
Impressionist artists try to achieve the highest color saturation by using colors with obvious purity and color tendency in the creative process. However, they do not use pure colors directly extruded from the pigment tube, but are properly blended. The contrast between cool color and warm color has become the main means to express the volume and space of an object, forming a basic painting law: the dark part of an object shows warm color under cold light. The object in warm light is cold, and the object in front is warmer than the object behind. Classical painters and impressionist painters rely on different picture factors when creating their own paintings. Classical painters rely on the relationship between black and white tones, anatomy and perspective to create a three-dimensional illusion on a two-dimensional plane. Impressionist painters seem to have abandoned the classical painter's model which has been inherited for hundreds of years, but once again adopted the optical theory and created a new painting language by using the complementary relationship between color warmth and color. In addition to optical research, the production of industrial pigments makes it very convenient for painters to directly use the industrial pigments packaged in pigment tubes for painting creation, and the pigments packaged in tin tubes are convenient for painters to carry, so as to better sketch outdoors. Moreover, the industrial production of pigments is also very rich, up to hundreds, which was almost unimaginable in the classical period. Due to the limitation of pigment production technology in the classical period, there were no workshops and factories specializing in pigment production. The production and preparation of pigments are all learned from teachers in the workshop-style art workplace during the artist's apprenticeship, which can be said to be a compulsory course before learning painting. Most of the materials used to make pigments are very rare mineral pigments, so artists can only make a limited number of colors according to their own creative content and preferences. This also limited the painter's attention to color to a certain extent. Throughout the history of western art, science has always influenced art, and elements such as anatomy and perspective form the basis of classical realistic painting, but these scientific elements have not formed an independent discipline. The painter's understanding of these elements mainly comes from the teacher's accumulated experience and his own creative process. Anatomy and perspective are not the performance objects of painters, but tools to make the painted objects more realistic. Impressionist painters describe light instead of scenery, and scientific theories and achievements become the objects of their expression.
Second, the support of the achievements of the industrial revolution.
The establishment of optical theory and the industrial production of chemical pigments have completely changed the way artists look at and express the world. As another great scientific and technological achievement in the19th century, the camera also deeply influenced the artists at that time.
The invention of the camera caused great panic among painters at that time, which should be more common among academic painters at that time. The pictures created by the camera surpass the artists who hand-painted from realism, and can completely replace the functionality of classical painting. Impressionist painters mostly use cameras as tools in their own creation. "Impressionist painters quickly captured the life scenes that were once considered vulgar, because they discovered the beauty of ordinary things and sketched the scenery directly outdoors. Their choice of subject matter is generally casual, and the content of the picture does not deliberately convey any ideas. They are obviously influenced by the' street shooting' in photography, and the composition is not as rigorous as traditional painting. " [4] Quoted from China Oil Painting, No.6, 2002, The Interaction between Western Painting and Photography, He Runzhu, Tianjin People's Fine Arts Publishing House ][4] The most obvious use of cameras is degas, and most of the images of a large number of showgirls he painted are captured by cameras first, and then sketched or directly used for creation. From the photos he took, we can find the prototype of the figure movements in a series of toner paintings he painted. The special composition of the camera also had a great influence on Degas. For example, this influence can be seen in his dance classroom and bathing girl series. Pictures are like photos, and the photographer and the subject are placed in the same space. Seeing his picture is like seeing it from a camera viewer, and there is a "sense of scene". Cassatt, an American impressionist female painter directed directly by Degas, is as concerned about the characters in real society as Degas. Her series of works "Mother and Son" benefited from degas's chalk drawing technique, and adopted the same photographic composition as degas, which looked like photos of daily life. In addition to Degas, Gauguin also likes to use cameras to collect creative themes for himself. In his series of oil paintings about aborigines, some of them are directly taken from his photos.
Impressionist artists were the first to use cameras, which made the achievements of industrial revolution collide with art again. In 1960s and 1970s, photographic realism, which was popular in America, was calm and objective in style. The artist's creation directly uses photos as a tool to describe the object, "capturing the truth without artificial modification and courage". [5] Quoted from China Oil Painting, No.6, 2002, Interaction between Western Painting and Photography, He Run, Tianjin People's Fine Arts Publishing House, page 49, line/kloc-0 ][5] andrew wyeth, the most famous realistic photographer in the United States, described the American customs with his exquisite painting skills and formed American localism. Also, American realistic photographer Close often likes to use the short lens of the camera and the hazy photography effect out of focus to depict the details that can't be seen clearly by the naked eye and express the mechanical reality that photography can't find.
In 1877, Monet painted a series of trains filled with smoke and steam. The towering and hard glass and steel station buildings in the painting show the life of modern European cities. What the artist implies is not only the formation of "mechanical aesthetics" in Paris in the industrial revolution, but also a new painting method, and this painting concept has been closely followed by mechanical civilization from the beginning. Pollock, an American abstract painter in the 20th century, was deeply influenced by Monet. From his Fog of Lavender, we can see the similarities with Monet's Water Lily. This similarity does not only refer to the hazy jumping picture effect. What's more, "painting" has been promoted to an act by Pollock. As mentioned above, Monet's creative state in painting the cathedral series constantly changes the canvas during the movement. Today, Monet is performing performance art, while Bockro exaggerates the beating of his body when painting, and the splash of paint bucket is an artistic act under passion. The works created by this style of painting naturally remind viewers of their own psychological state when creating works.
The movement of light is also a great contribution in impressionist works. In their eyes, the color of an object is in motion, and what they describe is the color of an object under a dynamic light. Impressionist young artists were influenced by barbizon School while getting rid of the academic salon exhibition, and landscape painting became the breakthrough of their artistic pursuit. There is a mentoring relationship between them and barbizon painters. Connor is a friend and mentor of the young impressionist painter. They painted in Fontainebleau forest together and supported them all the time. For example, Sisley Monet and Connor are friends who forget each other, and their painting style is influenced by Connor. Silver tones often appear in his photos. But the difference is that the boundary between impressionist landscape painting and traditional landscape painting is more obvious. It is different from Koro's continuation of the characteristics of classical landscape painting, which depicts static scenery under long-term stable light. The only difference is that the colors are more colorful, wandering between college and avant-garde. Monet and others pay more attention to the influence of light on the scenery in a short time, and pay attention to the color change of the scenery in different time environments. So impressionist landscape painting is dynamic, and even the starry sky in Van Gogh's works is like a river. They are not interested in continuous light. When Monet painted Rouen Cathedral, he usually started with 10 at the same time, and painted different weather conditions on different canvases at different times, so he was called "the slave of light". Monet's paintings don't depict the objects he sees, but depict the light by depicting the color changes of the objects. Monet is a thorough impressionist and the most persistent impressionist painter. The works that best represent his artistic pursuit and express light flu are undoubtedly his masterpiece "Water Lily" series in his later years, which shows the light changes in the morning and evening to the extreme through the sparkling water surface. Classical landscape painting is like classical portrait painting. Static and eternal achievements are the main manifestations of painters. The light in their paintings is stable and eternal, religious and symbolizes God. In the works of impressionist painters, light does not represent God; It stands for truth and science. The visual impact of impressionist colors is very explosive. Bright colors dominate the whole picture, and the jumping feeling of light and shadow is rushed to the extreme, and there is no sense of tranquility at all. As a product of the industrial age, the phenomenon caused by the fluidity of light has been applied to artistic creation. The relationship between mechanical civilization and modern art, from the way of painting, brush strokes to the materials used, has gradually influenced artists' views and attitudes towards the world. They agree with scientific theories and industrial achievements and make use of them.
The temptation of rebellious spirit
The rebellious spirit of impressionism also greatly inspired young artists in America. This rebellion has two main aspects.
1, oriental perceptual knowledge rebelled against western rational knowledge.
Impressionists applied oriental art (mainly China and Japanese) to their own pictures more directly. Monet wrote The Girl in a Kimono, which clearly shows his love for oriental art. The Water Lily was written by Monet when his eyes were almost blind in his later years. Bold brushwork has a very strong freehand brushwork style of China's calligraphy, and the color of the picture is full of oriental sensibility. The reason why China people are very happy to accept Impressionist works stems from the similarity between Impressionist painters and China's paintings and calligraphy. Pollock said, "Before I painted, I didn't know what I was going to paint. I didn't see what I was painting until I drew it. " This is basically consistent with the creative state of China's paintings and calligraphy.
Van Gogh copied a lot of Japanese ukiyo-e paintings and created them into oil paintings. From Van Gogh's Sunflower, we can see that there is basically no spatial relationship between the vase containing sunflowers and the back wall, and the desktop and the wall are just two cool-tone plane paintings that coordinate the color of the picture. Van Gogh's irrational artistic style was influenced by the oriental perceptual world to some extent. It also influenced American abstract expressionism after World War II, especially the hot abstract expressionism.
A large number of young American artists with advanced ideas, such as cassatt, learned about oriental works of art through Impressionism during their study in Paris, so the Oriental complex of Impressionism at that time influenced American artists to some extent. Cassatt, deeply influenced by Degas, is as obsessed with oriental art as Degas, so her paintings have a strong sense of oriental decoration. In her oil paintings, we can see the influence of Japanese Ukiyo-e-style plane decorative paintings on women's costumes.
The collision between oriental perceptual art and western primitive rational art spread to the United States through French artists. The later abstract expressionism of enlightened American artists. The abstract works of art created by American abstract painters Klein and motherwell in 1960s have a strong sense of oriental calligraphy.
2. Non-mainstream art rebelled against mainstream art.
Impressionism led the first artistic revolution against traditional art in the history of modern art. Their rebellious spirit stimulated the modernization process of traditional art. Impressionism became synonymous with rebellion at the end of 19. Their painting theory not only comes from the rebellion against tradition, but also the inner rebellious spirit of Impressionism makes Impressionism more diversified. Impressionism was gradually accepted by the public in the process of development, while the pre-impressionism headed by Monet gradually developed into the "academic school" of impressionism, and Cezanne became the first artist to quit impressionism. He believes that Monet pays too much attention to the influence of "light" on the picture, completely fails to see the relationship between the painter and the scenery depicted, and ignores personal feelings. In his letter to Birna, he said, "Light is essentially for painting. Subsequently, impressionism split into two schools, new impressionism and post-impressionism, which are two extreme ways to develop pre-impressionism.
Neo-impressionism applies artists' scientific and rational attitude to their own creation, and mathematical calculation methods have influenced their creative methods. For example, Seurat, a representative artist in the new impressionism, often uses mathematical formulas to calculate the color components and the content of color components in a color area when painting, and transforms Monet's pre-impressionist "freehand brushwork" into a uniform and regular stippling method. Seurat's picture weakens the sense of space of the picture, and the characters and background show relief effect. He and Monet are somewhat similar, both regard canvas as an artistic experiment and integrate the rational thinking mode of scientists into their own artistic creation;
Post-impressionist artists reject rationality and think that pre-impressionism pays too much attention to the description of the objective world and only stays on the surface. They emphasize the subjective world, pay attention to self-expression, and actively exaggerate and distort the things described. Both schools of painting originated from pre-impressionism, which made the artistic expression of impressionism more modern. Gauguin's characters are naive and simple, with plain colors, and the light and shade are completely ignored in his paintings, which has a strong decorative style. He was also the first person to pay attention to "primitive world art". Cezanne should be said to be the artist with the greatest personal achievement. He brought great innovation to modern art in color and modeling. Color became an integral part of the picture, and his body was subjectively exaggerated, which enhanced the sense of volume and weight of the object. His innovative principles of color and sketch respectively influenced cubism represented by Picasso and Fauvism represented by Matisse. So Cezanne is called "the father of modernism", which shows that the root of modern art lies in impressionism. Neo-impressionism and post-impressionism represented two development modes of art at that time, cold abstraction and hot abstraction.
Impressionists have a spiritual influence on American art, just as Courbet and Manet had an influence on Impressionists, which made them have a strong spirit of resistance to tradition. Around 1908, the United States also formed an art institution similar in nature to the French academic salon-the National Design Institute. Whether an artist can succeed in the art world depends entirely on whether they have obtained the membership of the National Design Institute. 1908 February, an exhibition of eight American artists was held in new york, similar to the exhibition of unsuccessful works by French salons. The eight American artists are: robert henri, Glackens, Ross, Shane, Si Long, Davis, Lawson and Prendergast. Among the eight artists, robert henri is their leader. He studied in Paris many times in his early years and loved MANET's works very much. He introduced these works to the young painter Glackens, who had a great influence on Glackens, such as Chez Monquin created by Glackens. Also, Prendergast was influenced by neo-impressionism, and his paintings mostly used flat color patterns. This eight-person painting school is the "trash can painting school" in the United States. Arnason commented on the "dustbin painting school" in the history of modern western art: "The significance of the eight-person exhibition of 1908 is probably that it is an isolated milestone in the history of American art.. However, another group of artists and students merged into the independent art school founded by Henry, and they continued to explore new ideas of American painting in different ways. These people include MacDonald Wright, Bruce and Stuart Davis, important American abstract artists, and Bellow and Hope who are devoted to exploring various forms of realism and romanticism. ..... This activity of individuals and their closest followers is of great significance in the history of modern American painting. " [5] Quoted from "History of Modern Western Art" by Arnason (USA), translated by Zou Denong, Ba and Liu Wei, Tianjin People's Fine Arts Publishing House [5].
Impressionism, as the first teacher of American modern art, inherited the rebellious spirit of American artists and traditions, which made American artistic style surging. After the twentieth century, the United States gradually replaced France as the leader of modern art in the world.
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French Impressionism has exerted great influence on American modern art through technological innovation and spiritual support. These two influences make American art gradually get rid of the identity of European art apprentices and gradually explore an artistic path independent of the United States. In the 20th century, the United States became the world's number one economic power. With the rise of commercial art and popular culture, the popularity of museums and new media, American modern art has led the development direction of world art.