Stuff I Learned This Week

To make a short story long, I recently, became interested in the Fauves and their ideas about painting. I especially enjoy their sense of color and fun. Though I love being a portrait painter, in my own personal work, I like to break away and experiment. I do this by either painting abstract landscapes or I copy the "masters" that came before me. Recently I have been copying both the Fauve and some Impressionist paintings.

To follow their thinking and before I could immerse myself into the language of the Fauves I saw a need to better understand the Impressionists. So, I began reading about the history of Impressionism. Sure enough, even after college and graduate school, it is a good idea to never stop learning and to always be curious.

Stuff I learned:

In 1855 Paris there were three serious ideas (and arguments) about painting. The idealists, the romantics, and the new bratty boy on the block, realism. [Daumier did a wonderful cartoon on these issues].

The idealist paintings referred to Greek classical tradition and the artists expected the viewer to be "classically" taught. That is why their paintings refer to Homer, Greek philosophers, etc. Their colors were neutral and cooler. [I've had classical training and I would never have figured that out. Obviously, I don't carry knowledge forward very well.]

The romantics said phooey with the cool neutral colors. We want drama. We want emotion in modern settings rather than classical history; or emotional paintings rather than learned paintings.

The realists considered the two as idealists because "their" paintings were imagined and existed in their mind. I.e., Delacroix never saw a lion hunt, though he painted one. [The differences among the three surprised me.]

Paris' Academy of Fine Arts was founded in 1648 by Louis XIV! The French citizens and following governments promoted the exhibits as essential to French nationalism. [I thought the French tore everything down during the revolution of 1789. And. I was wrong. Did the French have a greater sense of nationalism than the Chinese of 1911?]

That it was Courbet(!) who opened the door for Impressionism! [I understand that realists painted scenes that they themselves saw and experienced and that they were the ordinary and daily occurrences. But I was unaware they purposely avoided the Romantics' heightened emotions and the classicists "learned" theories.]

My education has been in the studio arts, but I am surprised my art history classes didn't discuss these turning points in greater depth. But then, that is the purpose of continuing education.

Ida Kotyuk

www.portraits-oils.com