Post-Impressionism
Characteristics
● Broad reaction against impressionism
● Use of bright impressionist palette
● Rejected impressionism’s emphasis on spontaneous recording of light and colour
● Sought create art with greater degree of formal order & structure
● Led more abstract styles
● Focused personal experience of painter
● Visible brushstrokes
● Personally expressive
● No fleeting light or movement
● Art for artist’s sake
Movement Background
● Breaking free from naturalism of Impressionism in late 1880s
● Group painters sought independent artistic styles for expressing emotions rather than optical impressions
● Themes of deeper symbolism
● Use simplified colours & definitive forms
● Renewed aesthetic sense & abstract tendencies
● Artists worked independently
● Artworks had symbolic & highly personal meaning
● Movement predominantly French, inspired similar developments throughout Europe
● Never cohesive movement
● Leading to avant-garde of late 19th Century
Identifying Characteristics
● Subjective & emotional expression
● Painters understood : what we see depends on how we see, and even more when we see
● OBJECTIVE VIEW subject to both perception & time
● Vibrant colours
● Thick paint application
● Real life subject matter
● Geometric shapes
● Distortion objects/figures for expressive effect
● Energetics brushstrokes = expressive effect
● Structure, order & optical effect of colour dominated aesthetics vision
● Rather than merely represent surroundings, relied upon interrelations of colour & shape to describe their world
Artist 1 : Vincent van Gogh
● Born : 30 March 1853
● Died : 29 July 1890
● Dutch painter
● Very religious & deeply affected people’s poverty
● Life desperate struggle against poverty, alcoholism & insanity - insatiable hunger for acceptance
● Brother Theo supported him till the end, commited suicide
● Introduced extremely bold ideas into use of colour
● Painted simple things in life : flowers, the sun, interior scenes etc.
● United emotion & reality
● Rhythm brushstrokes = expression inner turmoil & frustration
● Used palette knife, brush or straight from the tube
● Rhythms determined major sweeping forms - what famous for
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