Friday 18 September 2015

Realism in Olympia, Some Painting in Musée d'Orsay, Paris

We visited Musée d'Orsay in Paris.  The museums provides an important integrator  to preserve Arts which can actually reflects how human culture has evolved and speaks about humanity. we met a museum  volunteer originally from Cameron in Africa , a student to be our  guide to elaborate and open us on  some artworks. 

 

I am not a fan of paintry, but I like Musée d'Orsay more as  it doesn't have the boring Renaissance art in the Louvre, it  focuses on French art in the 19th and early 20th century which is more lively.
Let's appreciate naturalism and Realism. 

Olympia, the painting by Édouard Manet


Regards
Bill

The Musée d'Orsay is a must- see Museum, 

 Lots of famous masterpieces talking lively to the audiences.  

In 1986, the Musée d'Orsay, a museum formed of a former railway station, was opened 

 and now the museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915.  It speaks about the Salon of the eighteenth century,  and talks about Contemporary Cultures of Display

we met a museum  student (

Fred -study Marketing- 5. Yr. in France, living in one bedroom studio with girl friend paying $1200 rent per month , from Cameroon - 23M  people ,  south of Nigeria) 

volunteer originally from Cameroon in Africa ( 

France set up Cameroon as an autonomous state in 1957, and the next year its legislative assembly voted for independence by 1960) who was great to be our  guide to elaborate and open us on  some artworks. 

 

I like it more as  it doesn't have the boring Renaissance art in the Louvre, the d'Orsay focuses on French art in the 19th and early 20th century which is more lively.


 The Landscape of Humanity: Art, Culture, and Society
beauty should be one of the main aims of art; the attempt to understand ourselves and our place in the world from our subjective point of view is at the heart of culture (this in stark contrast with the aims of science); and artworks are essentially the products of human spirit and imagination, and could never be mechanically produced.
 to operate in an open and human way, there needs to be a sizable middle class committed to the traditions of liberty and humanity,  that more than Popperian openness is needed to hold a society together.
O'Hear considered  art and aesthetic experience point to something that transcends the material and evolutionary theory cannot give us a full account of human life and experience, however agreed that Art cannot function as a serious political gesture. 
 The Landscape of Humanity

Difference between Nude ( nature and not so real - classic ) and naked ( Realist-more real , not perfect as naturalism by Manet Edouard - later more concentrate on showing light on subject than the subject itself  ) 

Clark's insights and suggestions into the philosophy of the nude:   to "explain" the Greeks, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Renoir on the limited aspect of art history. He commented on the  changes in standards of beauty chronically ; the mathematical and detached nude of classical Greece decays with change in attitude toward the flesh, into the bulbous and ascetic shapes of medieval art.  "The very degradation the body has suffered as a result of Christian morality served to sharpen its erotic impact. The formula of the classical ideal had been more protective than any drapery; whereas the shape of the Gothic body, which suggested that it was normally clothed, gave it the impropriety of a secret." Ergo, a rebirth of interest in the human form as a subject of art in the Renaissance, although with a different view of man implicit in every muscle, for the Renaissance--especially the Michelangelo--nude was burdened with a soul."
These problems which he delinates seem to be most central to any study of aesthetics or culture, and his often quite modest conclusions, offer food for thought, though not to be taken without careful examination. The work seems sure to become something of a classic. It is richly rewarding and provocative reading which illuminates and makes explicit a part of the world too seldom looked at with the full light of intelligence and that is critical to an understanding of what we are in physical terms, an appreciation which seems very distant from us, and yet Clark's words ring true.
Discussing the distinction between "naked" and "nude," Clark insists that the nude must be an idealization, and that this ideal beauty is a tangible vision  that the nude is "a means of affirming the belief in ultimate perfection."

The nude, then, need not only hymn what a marvelous work is man, but also how pathetic.  The nude has the strength of both immediacy and severe truth--man as he really is. 

This "truth" of the nude is reenforced by the knowledge that human beauty is transitory. The Greeks felt that the human figure in its prime is the highest subject of art, but not, one suspects, from the unbalanced optimism about the powers of man for which they are often given credit, but from a sense of tragedy of the mortal before the immortal and of the fleetingness of youth and happiness.
Clark  added "No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling."
Clark's Analysis of Nude Balances Real and Ideal | News | The Harvard Crimson

Impressionism- 1874- 20th century. --how to present a thing , not drawing and detailing the material subject. 
Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul. The impressionists regarded Manet as their inspiration and leader in their spirit of revolution, 

For most of the nineteenth century then, the Salon was the only way to exhibit your work (and therefore the only way to establish your reptutation and make a living as an artist). The works exhibited at the Salon were chosen by a jury—which could often be quite arbitrary. The artists we know today as Impressionists—Claude Monet, August Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley (and several others)—could not afford to wait for France to accept their work. They all had experienced rejection by the Salon jury in recent years and felt that waiting an entire year between exhibitions wastoo long. They needed to show their work and they wanted to sell it.
The Impressionists pooled their money, rented a studio and held eight exhibitions from 1874 through 1886.
Courbet, Manet and the Impressionists also challenged the Academy’s category  that only “history painting” was great painting. These young Realists and Impressionists questioned the long establiished hierarchy of subject matter and believed that landscapes and genres scenes (scenes of contemporary life) were worthy and important.  Their technique tried to capture what they saw. They painted small commas of pure color one next to another. When viewer stood at a reasonable distance their eyes would see a mix of individual marks; colors that had blended optically which ain. Their technique tried to capture what they saw. They painted small commas of pure color one next to another. When viewer stood at a reasonable distance their eyes would see a mix of individual marks; colors that had blended optically which created more vibrant colors than colors mixed as physical paint on a palette.  The Impressionists wanted to create an art that was modern by capturing the rapid pace of contemporary life and the fleeting conditions of light. They painted outdoors (en plein air) to capture the appearance of the light as it flickered and faded while they worked.



Best Regards
Bill

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