Impressionism

Impressionism is about the nature of fugitive light falling on surfaces. This play of moving light, as opposed to stationary light, expresses the ephemeral quality of modernity.  Impressionism is about the temporary, the here and now, and not about the timeless, the forever. Impressionism is about life lived in bursts of brief encounters in the city. It's about faster speeds, quickly moving clouds, sunshine reflected on water, and the shimmer of satin ribbons dangling from a baby's cradle. Above all, Impressionism is about modernity: its faster pace and various improvements in the quality of daily life. It is about middle class activities: shopping, vacationing, rushing, strolling, lingering, waiting, working and taking time off to flirt in a Montmartre dance hall or a restaurant on the Seine. The artists who seemed to quickly jot down these instances of modern life were playfully dubbed "Impressionists" and their paintings became known as "Impressionism." However, the critics' nickname was not a compliment, for at this time "serious" artists blended their colors and minimized the appearance of brushstrokes to produce the "licked" surface preferred by the academic masters. Impressionism featured short, visible strokes - dots, commas, smears and blobs - that the arbiters of taste considered pathetically inept. To say "Impressionist" in 1874 meant the painter had no skill and lacked the common sense to finish a painting before selling it.

In 1874, a group of artists who dedicated themselves to this "messy" style pooled their resources to promote themselves in their own exhibition. The idea was radical. In those days the French art world revolved around the annual Salon, an official exhibition sponsored by the French government through its Académie des Beaux-Arts.

The group called themselves the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Engravers, etc., and rented the photographer Nadar's studio in a new building, which was on its own a rather modern edifice. Their effort caused a brief sensation. For the average art-audience, the art looked strange, the exhibition space looked unconventional and the decision to show their art outside of the Salon or the Academy's orbit (and even sell directly off the walls) seemed close to madness. Indeed, they pushed the limits of art in the 1870s far beyond the range of "acceptable" practice.

The best known artists in the group were Claude Monet, Pierre-August Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Eugene Boudin, and Berthe Morisot. One of Claude Monet's entries for the show, Impression: Sunrise (1873) inspired the critical nickname "Impressionism" in the earliest reviews (Louis Leroy, Le Charivari, 25 April 1874).

What do you think about this style of art?

Cubism

Cubism began as an idea and then it became a style. Based on Paul Cézanne's three main ingredients - geometricity, simultaneity (multiple views) and passage - Cubism tried to describe, in visual terms, the concept of the Fourth Dimension.

Cubism is a kind of Realism. It is a conceptual approach to realism in art, which aims to depict the world as it is and not as it seems. This was the "idea." For example, pick up any ordinary cup. Chances are the mouth of the cup is round. Close your eyes and imagine the cup. The mouth is round. It is always round - whether you are looking at the cup or remembering the cup. To depict the mouth as an oval is a falsehood, a mere device to create an optical illusion. The mouth of a glass is not an oval; it is a circle. This circular form is its truth, its reality. The representation of a cup as a circle attached to the outline of its profile view communicates its concrete reality. In this respect, Cubism can be considered realism, in a conceptual, rather than perceptional way.

A good example can be found in Pablo Picasso's Still Life with Compote and Glass (1914-15), where we see the circular mouth of the glass attached to its distinctive fluted goblet shape. The area that connects two different planes (top and side) to one another is passage. The simultaneous views of the glass (top and side) is simultaneity. The emphasis on clear outlines and geometric forms is geometricity. To know an object from different points of view takes time, because you move the object around in space or you move around the object in space. Therefore, to depict multiple views (simultaneity) implies the Fourth Dimension (time).

Why did this style of art become so popular?

Abstract Art

Abstract art can be a painting or sculpture (including assemblage) that does not depict a person, place or thing in the natural world -- even in an extremely distorted or exaggerated way. Therefore, the subject of the work is based on what you see: color, shapes, brushstrokes, size, scale and, in some cases, the process (see action painting). Abstract art began in 1911 with such works as Picture with a Circle (1911) by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944).

Kandinsky believed that colors provoke emotions. Red was lively and confident; Green was peaceful with inner strength; Blue was deep and supernatural; Yellow could be warm, exciting, disturbing or totally bonkers; and White seemed silent but full of possibilities. He also assigned instrument tones to go with each color: Red sounded like a trumpet; Green sounded like a middle-position violin; Light Blue sounded like flute; Dark Blue sounded like a cello, Yellow sounded like a fanfare of trumpets; and White sounded like the pause in a harmonious melody.

These analogies to sounds came from Kandinsky's appreciation for music, especially that by the contemporary Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). Kandinsky's titles often refer to the colors in the composition or to music, for example "improvisation."

The French artist Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) belonged to Kandinsky's Blue Rider (Die Blaue Reiter) group, and with his wife, Russian-born Sonia Delaunay-Turk (1885-1979), they both gravitated toward abstraction in their own movement Orphism or Orphic Cubism.

What do you think about abstract art?

Realism

Realism depicts the world, its events, and people as they really are. There is no personification of people as mythological beings, no one is glorified, romanticizing anyone or anything is out. Realism is a social commentary on the world in which we live. Artists took the common and ordinary, and elevated them to a higher status.

The focus of Realism is on the common man. For too long the workers, peasants, and laborers of life were never the subject of art. Why? For one thing, common people never had the money to commission works of art. No farmer could trade crops for a portrait of himself farming, for instance. Nor did common people have the money to go to museums, Salons, or Academies of Art. And this despite making up the vast majority of people on Earth.

Artists like Gustave Courbet felt the need to depict ordinary people and show the rest of society what their lives were like. It was social commentary, pure and simple.

Do you like this style of art?