Читать книгу Post-Impressionism - Nathalia Brodskaya - Страница 3

The period of Post-Impressionism began at a time of unbelievable changes in the world. Technology was generating true wonders. The development of science, which formerly had general titles – physics, chemistry, biology, medicine – took many different, narrower channels. At the same time this encouraged very different areas of science to combine their efforts, giving birth to discoveries that had been unthinkable just two to three decades earlier. They dramatically changed the perception of the world and humanity. For example, the work of Charles Darwin The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex was published as early as 1871. Each new discovery or expedition brought something new. Inventions in transport and communications took men into previously inaccessible corners of the Earth. Ambitious new projects were designed to ease the communication between different parts of the world. In 1882 in Greece, the construction of the canal through the Isthmus of Corinth began; in 1891 Russia commenced the construction of the great Trans-Siberian railway which was finished by 1902; in America work started on the construction of the Panama Canal. Knowledge of new territories could not go unnoticed in the development of art.

At the same time there were great developments in telecommunications and transport. In 1876 Bell invented the telephone and, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century people began talking to each other in spite of the distance. Thanks to the invention of the telegraph, in 1895 Marconi developed the network of Hertzien waves, and four years later, the first radio program was broadcast. The speed of travelling across the Earth was increasing incredibly. In 1884 the first steam-car appeared on the streets of France; in 1886 Daimler and Benz were already producing cars in Germany, and the first car exhibition took place in Paris in 1898. In 1892 the first tramway was running in the streets of Paris, and in 1900 the Paris underground railway was opened. Man was taking to the air and exploring the depths of the earth. In 1890 Ader was the first to take off in an airplane; in 1897 he flew with a passenger, and in 1909 Blériot flew across the Channel. As early as 1887 Zédé had designed an electrically-fired submarine. It seemed like all the science-fiction projects of Jules Verne had become reality.

2. Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, 1889.

Oil on canvas, 51 × 45 cm.

Private collection, Chicago.

3. Paul Cézanne, Self-Portrait with a Cap, 1872.

Oil on canvas, 53 × 39.7 cm.

The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

4. Vincent van Gogh, Boats on the Beach of Saintes-Maries, 1888.

Pencil, pen and Indian ink, watercolour on paper, 39 × 54 cm.

The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

At the same period, scientific discoveries, barely noticed, but nevertheless significant for humanity, were taking place. In 1875 Flemming discovered chromosomes; in 1879 Pasteur found it was possible to vaccinate against diseases; in 1887 August Weismann published the Theory of Heredity. Lawrence discovered electrons; Röntgen did the same for X-rays and Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radioactivity. These discoveries in the field of science and engineering might seem distant from the Fine Arts, but nevertheless, they had a major influence on them. Technology gave birth to a new kind of art: in 1894 Edison recorded the first moving pictures, and in 1895 the Lumière brothers screened their first film.

European explorers became more and more adventurous, and brought back to Europe new and remarkable materials. In 1874 Stanley crossed Africa. In 1891 Dubois discovered the remains of a ‘pithecanthropus erectus’ on the island of Java. Previously during the 1860s, archaeologists E. Lartet and H. Christy found a drawing of a woolly mammoth engraved on a tusk in the Madeleine caves. It was hard to believe in the existence of Palaeolithic art, but further archaeological research provided evidence of its aesthetic value. In 1902 archaeologist Émile Cartailhac published a book in Paris called ‘Confession of a Sceptic’ which put an end to the long-lasting scorn of cave art. The amazing Altamira cave paintings, which had been subject to doubt for a long time, were finally proclaimed authentic. An intensive search for examples of prehistoric art began, which at the turn of the century turned into ‘cave fever’.

5. Paul Signac, Boat in the St Tropez Harbour – Tartanes pavoisées, Saint-Tropez, 1893.

Oil on canvas, 56 × 46.5 cm.

Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal.

6. Paul Gauguin, Arearea (Happiness), 1892.

Oil on canvas, 75 × 94 cm.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

7. Paul Sérusier, Breton Women, the Meeting in the Sacred Wood, c. 1891–1893.

Oil on canvas, 72 × 92 cm. Private collection.

8. Paul Cézanne, The Banks of the Marne (Villa on the Bank of a River), 1888.

Oil on canvas, 65.5 × 81.3 cm.

The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

9. Vincent van Gogh, The Yellow House (Vincent’s House at Arles), 1888.

Oil on canvas, 72 × 91.5 cm.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The end of the nineteenth century also saw the birth of a new science: ethnography. In 1882 the ethnographical museum was opened in Paris and in 1893 an exhibition of Central America took place in Madrid. In 1898 during a punitive expedition to the British African colonies, the English rediscovered Benin and its strange art long after the Portuguese discovery in the fifteenth century. The art works in gold of the indigenous Peruvian and Mexican populations, which had flooded Europe in the sixteenth century after the discovery of America and had scarcely been noticed by the art world; it was nothing more than precious metal to be melted down. The expansion of European boundaries at the end of the nineteenth century opened incredible aesthetic horizons to painters. Classic antiquity ceased to be the only source of inspiration for figurative art. What O. Spengler later called the ‘decline of Europe’, which implied the end of pan-Europeanism in the widest sense of the word, had immediate effects on art.

The year 1886 marked the beginning of fundamental changes in the appearance of Paris. A competition was organised for the construction of a monument to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution (1789) which coincided with the World’s Fair. It was the project of the engineer Gustave Eiffel to build a tower which was accepted. The idea of building a 300 metre tall metal tower in the very centre of Paris alarmed Parisians. On February 14, 1887, the newspaper Le Temps published an open letter signed by Francois Coppée, Alexandre Dumas, Guy de Maupassant, Sully Prudhomme, and Charles Garnier, architect of the Paris Opera building which was finished in 1875. They wrote: “We the writers, painters, sculptors, achitects, passionate lovers of the as yet intact beauty of Paris express our indignation and vigourously protest, in the name of French taste, in the name of threatened French art and history, against the erection of the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower right in the centre of our capital. Is the city of Paris to be associated any longer with oddities and with the mercantile imagination of a machine builder, to irreparably disfigure and dishonour it? (…) Imagine for a moment this vertiginously ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, overpowering with its bulk Notre-Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Saint-Jacques Tower, the Louvre, and the dome of Les Invalides, shaming all our monuments, dwarfing all our architecture, which will disappear in this nightmare (…) And, for twenty years, we shall see, spreading out like a blot of ink, the hateful shadow of this abominable column of bolted metal.”[1]

10. Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night (detail), 1888.

Oil on canvas, 72.5 × 92 cm.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

11. Pierre Bonnard, The Little Laundry Girl, 1896.

Lithograph in 5 colours, 30 × 19 cm.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

Nevertheless, the World’s Fair of 1889 surprised Paris with the fine beauty of Eiffel’s architecture. During the exhibition 12,000 people a day visited the tower, and later it was used for telegraphic transmissions. But more importantly it finally became one of the dominant architectural features against which it had been opposed. The city was moving towards the twentieth century, and nothing could stop its development. Given the metal market pavilions of Baltard and the railway stations, the Paris of Haussmann had no trouble adopting the Eiffel Tower. Amongst the Post-Impressionist artists of the period, some immediately welcomed the new architectural aesthetic. For Paul Gauguin the World’s Fair was the discovery of the exotic world of the East, with its Hindu temples and its Javanese dances. But the functional purity of the pavilion construction also impressed him. Gauguin wrote a text entitled “Notes sur l’art à l’Exposition universelle,” (“Notes on Art at the World’s Fair”) which was published in Le Moderniste illustré on July 4, 1889. “A new decorative art has been invented by engineer-architects, such as ornamental bolts, iron corners extending beyond the main line, a kind of gothic iron lacework,” he wrote. “We find this to some extent in the Eiffel Tower.” Gauguin liked the heavy and simple decoration of the tower, and its purely industrial material. He was categorically opposed to eclecticism and a mixture of styles. The new era produced a new aesthetic: “So why paint the iron the colour of butter, why gild it like the Opera? No, that’s not good taste. Iron, iron and more iron!”[2] The Post-Impressionist era was to dramatically change tastes and artistic passions. In 1912 Guillaume Apollinaire already designated the Eiffel tower as the new symbol of the city, becoming in his poems a shepherd guarding the bridges of Paris.

The year 1900 brought Paris new architectural landmarks: palaces appeared on the banks of the Seine, where pavilions for World’s Fair were traditionally built. Eugène Hénard drew up a plan for the right bank of which the principal feature was a wide avenue in the axis of the esplanade of Les Invalides and the Alexandre III Bridge. Along both sides of the avenue two pavilions were erected for the World’s Fair of 1900 – the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais – miracles of modern construction engineering. The principle of these constructions is that of a metallic structure surrounded by a façade of stone. The use of metal structures allowed decorating palaces with heavy stone and bronze sculptures in combination with painting and mosaic. These structures allowed roofs to be built over the huge spaces of the Grand Palais and to place spectacular halls for different kinds of temporary exhibitions, even industrial ones, inside. Many famous sculptors and painters of the end of nineteenth century took part in the decoration of the palace, so that it became the monument to the new style, born in the era of Post-Impressionism.

12. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Divan Japonais, c. 1892–1893.

Lithograph in colours, poster, 80.8 × 60.8 cm.

Private collection.

13. Édouard Vuillard, Chestnut Trees.

Distemper on cardboard mounted on canvas, 110 × 70 cm.

Private collection.

At the same time, on the left bank of the Seine stood another palace. Well, it was not a palace as such, but the Gare d’Orsay and a hotel, built with the drawings of architect Victor Laloux. Trains were supposed to deliver visitors of the World’s Fair of 1900 directly in the centre of Paris. Contemporaries compared the station to the Petit Palais. “The station is superb, and looks like a Palais des Beaux-Arts. Just like the Palais des Beaux-Arts resembles a train station, I proposed to Laloux that he make the switch if there is still time,” wrote one of the artists after the opening of the World’s Fair. These new palaces completed Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paris.