ModernismOrigin of the Avant-garde in Paris

Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet

Fathers of the Avant-garde – the “Forty-eighters”

Nadar, Portrait of ManetEarly 1870’s

Nadar, Portrait of CourbetLate 1860’s

Gustave Courbet (French Realism painter, 1819-1877) Burial at Ornans, 1849 Thomas Couture (French Academic Classicism 1815–79) Romans of the Decadence,

1847

(top) Oscar G. Rejlander (Swedish-British, Victorian Art photography) The Two Ways of Life, 1857, combination albumen print from 33 negatives

(below) Thomas Couture (French Academic Classicism 1815–79), oil on canvas, Romans of the Decadence, 1847, 15 x 25 ft

Roger Fenton (British, 1819–1869) The Queen and the Prince, wet plate1854

Victorian “Art” photographers took Academic paintings as their model of what art is.

Edwin Landseer (British), Windsor Castle in Modern Times, 1841-5, oil on canvas44 x 56” Victoria and Albert “at home”

Thomas Couture, A Realist, 1865

(left) Courbet (Avant-garde Realism) The Stonebreakers, 1849(right) William Bouguereau (French Academic Classicism, 1825-1905), Home From the

Harvest, 1878

(left) Honoré Daumier (Realism) Third Class Carriage, o/c, 1862(right) William Bouguereau (Academic Classicism) Mother and Children, The Rest, 1879

Disdéri, Paris Commune Destruction, 1871

Disdéri, Bodies of Dead Communards, 1871

Disdéri, Napoleon IIIEmpress Eugénie, andPrince Eugène, c.1860

Daumier, The Uprising, 1860

Avant-garde art and politics are inseparablefor the generation of 1848

(the Forty-Eighters, Nadar’s “Republic of Mind”)

Edouard Manet, The Commune,Lithograph, 1871

Political cartoon, Paris, c.1872,showing Courbet with his foot onthe Vendome column toppledduring the Commune of 1871

Edouard Manet (French Realist Painter, 1832-1883) Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) oil on canvas, 1862

(left) Titian, Concert Champêtre (Italian Renaissance) 1510 (right) Edouard Manet (French Realism), Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe, 1862

Marcantonio Raimondi, Judgment of Paris, (engraving after Raphael), 1520 compared with Manet, Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe

Manet, Olympia, 1863, Oil on canvas, 51 x 74 3/4 in, (130.5 x 190 cm) Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Titian or Giorgione, Venus of Urbino, 1510 (Louvre) compared to Olympia 1863

Alexandre Cabanel (French Academic Painter, 1823-1889) Birth of Venus, 1863

Jean-Léon Gérôme (French academic painter, 1824-1904), Phrynee Before the Judges, 1861

Daumier cartoon: “Venuses Again, Always Venuses” c. 1860

William Bouguereau, Birth of Venus, 1879 and Paul Baudry, Venus and Cupid, c. 1857

Critics joked about the confrontational“masculinity" of Olympia and what might be hidden beneath her hand.

Charles Baudelaire byManet

From reading, “The Modern Public and Photography,” what were Baudelaire’sComplaints against photography?

Honoré Daunier, Nadar Elevating Photography to the Level of Art, lithograph, 1862, appeared in Le Boulevard (Parisian newspaper).

Edouard Manet, The 1867 World Exhibition, Nadar’s balloon, The Giant, is upper right

Nadar created the first aerial views of cities but first photographs were lost.

Pictorialism and the Emergence ofAvant-garde photography

Peter Henry Emerson (Cuban-born British photographer and writer, 1856-1936) Gathering Waterlilies, 1886, platinotype, from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads

Pictorialism

Reading: “Hints on Art,” P.H. Emerson

Emerson extended this Helmholtzian idea of "vision as impression" to photography

Peter Henry Emerson, The Haunt of the Pike, 1888, platinotype

Emerson believed that true art was expressed only in "truth to Nature."

As a means of artistic expression, the camera is second only to the brush -- how successful the artist is with either depends entirely upon himself. All we ask is that the results be fairly judged by the only true standard - Nature.

(left) Peter Henry Emerson, The Haunt of the Pike, 1888, platinotype(right top) John Constable (English Romanticism), The Haywain, 1821(right below) Theodore Rousseau (French Barbison Landscape painter) Forest of Fontainebleau, Morning, 1850

Constable and Rousseau (right) are key sources for Impressionist painting, the first avant-garde modernist art movement to break from the academic practice that had held hegemony for centuries in Western art.

Theodore Rousseau (French, 1812 – 1867) Forest of Fontainebleau, Morning, oil on canvas, 1850 – “Barbison School” (Proto-Impressionism)

First Impressionist Exhibition 15 April 1874: “Exhibition of the Société Anonyme of Painters, Sculptors, and Printmakers”

(left) Nadar (Gaspard-Felix Tournachon) (1820-1910) Nadar¹s Studio at 35 Boulevard des Capucines’ (right) Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, 1873 (31 1/4 x 23 1/4")

Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, oil on canvas, 1873

Impressionism

Monet, Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874(right) Anonymous photographer, The Argenteuil Railway Bridge, c.1895

Subjects of modern art - Modern Life new technologies and progress, capturing the moment and the transitory nature of modern experience

The Impressionist Eye is, in short, the most advanced eye in human evolution

Jules Laforgue

Peter Henry Emerson (Pictorialism) Poling the Marsh Hay, 1886, platinotype,from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads.

(right) Camille Pissarro, (French Neo-Impressionism), The Gleaners, 1889

(left) Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) In the Omnibus, drypoint and aquatint, 1890-91(right) Suzuki Harunobu (1724-1770) Women and Child, woodblock print, c.1750

Ukiyo-e prints were a key source for modernist form and content.

Van Gogh, Plum tree in Bloom (after Hiroshige), oil on canvas1887 (Paris)

Hiroshige Ando, Plum Estate, Kameido, 1857, woodblock print

The Montmartre gallery of Samuel Bing was next door to van Gogh’s Paris apartment. Bing kept thousands of Japanese prints in stock. Vincent became an avid collector.

Avant-garde Japonisme

Paul Gauguin (Post Impressionism) Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1888(Pont Aven)

Paul Gauguin directly appropriates Japanese perspective and composition and the Modernist concept of a picture as an autonomous creation - not merely a representation of an objective subject.

Hiroshige Ando, Plum Estate, Kameido, 1857, Japanese woodblock print

Paul Cézanne (French Post-Impressionist Painter, 1839-1906) The Basket of Apples, ca. 1895, oil on canvas.

Cézanne is the “Fatherof Modern Painting” becausehe defied the very principlesof optics that broughtphotography into being.

Peter Gelassi, Before Photography

Photography relies on two scientific principles :

1) A principle of optics on which the Camera Obscura is based

2) Principle of chemistry, that certain combinations of elements, especially silver halides, turn dark when exposed to light (rather than heat or exposure to air) was demonstrated in 1717 by Johann Heinrich Schulze, professor of anatomy at the

University of Altdorf

Would Leonardo’s draughtsman see what Cézanne pictured?

Modern painting is a liberation from optical “truth.” Photography – the most modern art medium and the child of both science and art – was thus in a paradoxical position.

The problem was to discover modern photographic form.

Leonardo Da Vinci, Draughtsman Using a Transparent Plane to Draw an Armillary Sphere, 1510

Cézanne, Still Life with PlasterPutto, 1893, oil on canvas

(left) Pablo Picasso (Early Cubism) Reservoir at Horta, 1907(right) Piero della Francesca (Italian Early Renaissance) An Ideal Townscape, 1470

Cubism was a reversal of Renaissance illusionism. Cubist form displays multiple perspectives, multiple and arbitrary lighting sources, forms that open onto each other and do not recede. This new Modernist vocabulary, the invention of painters, vastly expanded the possibilities for photography.

Avant-garde Modernist photography

Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession

“In an unprecedented show for the National Arts Club [New York] in 1902, Stieglitz brought together photographs by pictorialists…. He titled the exhibition “The Photo-Secession,” to indicate a revolt from hackneyed style and technique as well as from lax artistic standards.”

Alan Trachtenberg, notes to “Pictorial Photography” by Alfred Stieglitz

1902 publication

Stieglitz, photograph ofFountain, by Marcel Duchamp,1917

Clarence White (American, 1871-1925) Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz, 1908

gum platinum print

(left) Alfred Stieglitz, 291--Picasso-Braque Exhibition, 1915, platinum print(right) Stieglitz at the Little Galleries of Photo-Secession ('291')

291 Fifth Avenue, New York, opened in 1905

Cubist collages exhibited with African sculpture

291 gallery was in the apartment vacated by Edward Steichen, who designed and decoratedthe exhibition space.

Alfred Stieglitz, Sun Rays - Paula, Berlin, 1889, Platinotype

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946), Watching for the Return, 1894, photogravure for Camera Notes, quarterly publication of the New York Camera Club

Stieglitz, Fifth Avenue, Winter, 1892, gelatin dry plate

“My picture, Fifth Avenue, Winter, is the result of a three hours stand during a fierce snow-storm on February 22nd, 1893, awaiting the proper moment.… I remember how upon having developed the negative of the picture I showed it to some of my colleagues. They smiled and advised me to throw away such rot…. Such were the remarks made about what I knew was a piece of work quite out of the ordinary, in that it was the first attempt at picture making with the hand camera in such adverse and trying circumstances from a photographic point of view.

Stieglitz, “The Hand Camera – Its Present Importance,” 1897

Alfred Stieglitz, A Bit of Venice, 1894, photogravure

for Camera Notes, quarterly publication of the New York Camera Club

THE PHOTOGRAVURE PROCESS

Invented by Karel Klí in 1879, photogravure is a photomechanical process (heliogravure in French) using an etching method to reproduce the appearance of a continuous range of tones in a photograph.

Alvin Langdon Coburn (British working in the US and Britain,1882-1966)

Self-Portrait, ca. 1908, photgravure

Stieglitz, Flatiron Building, 1902, photogravure.

Hiroshige Ando, Plum Estate, Kameido, 1857, woodblock print

Alfred Stieglitz, The Hand of Man, photogravure From Camera Work No. 1. February 1903

(right) Claude Monet, Saint-Lazare Station, 1877

Pictorialism and Impressionism

In 1903 Stieglitz launched, edited and published Camera Work - a magazine which became world famous and continued publication until 1917 (50 issues). Cover byEdward Steichen is in the Arts & Crafts aesthetic ofWilliam Morris.

Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1907, photogravure

"There were men and women and children on the lower deck of the steerage.... I longed to escape from my surroundings and join them.... A round straw hat, the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right.... round shapes of iron machinery... I saw a picture of shapes and underlying that, the feeling I had about life..."

Stieglitz

“As analytic cubism emerged, Alfred Stieglitz, who was still championing pre-modernist Pictorialism, underwent a transformation in his aesthetic thinking.”

Hirsch

Picasso, Ma Jolie, 1911

Analytic CubismAlfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1907, photogravure

“There were two stages in his life: at first he produced somewhat romanticized pictures of an Impressionistic style, then later moving over to realism of a high order.”

Robert Leggett

A History of Photography

“The Pictorialists played on photography's ability to recall memories and associations, yet they also recognized that such memories are rarely sharply defined but more often dreamlike and indistinct, composed of nothing more than a small incident or passing glance.”

Edward Steichen (Luxembourgeois-born American Photographer, 1879-1973), Flatiron Building, 1907, cyanotype - gum bichromate - platinum print

Pictorialism / Photo-Secession

Reinforcing the idea of a singular masterpiece, the pictorialists manipulated their images so extensively in the darkroom that, often, the result was a unique image that could not be duplicated.

Edward Steichen, Self-Portrait with Brush and Palette, 1902, gum bichromate

Steichen, The Pond, Moonrise, 1905, gum-bichromate – platinotype

Pictorialism / Photo-Secession

Edward Steichen, Rodin - the Thinker, 1902, gum bichromate

“For practically the first time in photography, the specificity and individuality of the objects in front of the camera were of no importance, but were only a vehicle for the expression of an idea. By divorcing photography from its scientific heritage, pictorial photographers also divorced it from reality.”

Edward Steichen, The Big White Cloud, Lake George, 1903. Carbon print

Pictorialism / Photo-Secession

Gertrude Käsebier (American Photographer, 1852-1934)

Blessed Art Thou among Women, 1899. Platinotype

Pictorialism / Photo-Secession

Gertrude Käsebier, Widow, ca. 1905, platinotype.

“To name an object is to suppress three-quarters of the enjoyment to be found in the poem .. . suggestion, that is the dream.”

Stéphane MallarméFrench Symbolist poet

Gertrude Käsebier, Manger, ca. 1905, platinotype

Pictorialism / Photo-Secession

J.M. Cameron, 1865

Clarence H. White (American, 1871-1925), Untitled (Nude Study), 1906-09 platinotype

Pictorialism / Photo-Secession

Clarence H. White, Raindrops, 1902, platinotype.

Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1918. Platinotype.

Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1920, Gelatin Silver Print

Georgia O'Keeffe, (1887-1988)Large Dark Red Leaf on White, 1925

Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1919. Palladiotype.

Alfred Stieglitz, Clouds, Music No. 1, Lake George, palladium print. 1922.

In 1922, Stieglitz continued to explore this inner psychological theme, but he returned to nature and symbolist theory and isolated the sky as a surrogate heart..

Alfred Stieglitz, Songs of the Sky, 1924. GSP.

Alfred Stieglitz, Equivalent, 1929. GSP

Abstract photography

Stieglitz believed that his Equivalents were the pure expression of his inner state of being.

He rarely, if ever, explained in words what actual feelings or emotions were present when particular pictures were made, however. He expected that his audience would have an intuitive perception of their meaning that was parallel to the instinct that caused them to be created.

- The Getty Museum

Alfred Stieglitz, Equivalent, 1931. Gsp.

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Alfred StieglitzThe Eloquent Eye

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