Discovering Arts and Culture, Essay Example

Romanticism versus Impressionism

It is clear that people used to see different art movements. Each generation had its own understanding of such things as beauty and art. There were various approaches to analyzing art; and, mainly, the analysis depended on humans’ awareness of art. Each art movement can be characterized by certain mission. This very mission refers to what a society considers to be aesthetic. As for this paper, it is aimed at comparing and contrasting two art moments, including a representative from each movement. As a result, Romanticism and Impressionism together with Francisco Goya and Claude Monet were chosen.

Both art movements developed as an opposition to the previous culture that people followed. Romanticism demonstrated rebellion against the rationalism as well as moral values of Enlightenment; as for Impressionism, it developed as an opposition to traditional technologies in painting (Salmi 102). Romanticism appeared after the French Revolution and characterised the period of 1790 to 1850. Impressionism developed in 1860s as a result of conflict between Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and the Paris School of painters (Facos 121). Despite the fact that both movements are characterised by rebellious aspects, their themes were still quite different.

The principles of Romanticism were about showing the free will, concentration on the entity of personality and ignoring deeply-rooted praises of power and authorities (Rosenthal 43). It is necessary to say that artists wanted to find out the secrets of human nature from different angles. The main motives of the movement were the description of human portraits demonstrating the variety of moods and facial looks, description of fantasies and surreal tendencies of a human psyche and dreams. On various occasions, artists described their personal feelings and emotions in their artworks; it is obvious that Romanticism was concentrated the artistic value of subjectivity and the personification of the art (Rosenthal 47). Romanticism also was focused on epic motives. It also looked for the connection between a human being and nature. That is why landscapes and nature-related themes became important in this epoch. Furthermore, Romanticism paid attention to the details of composition as means of showing the abovementioned ideas.

Alternatively, Impressionism referred to the painting art and concentrated on the perspective of painting and the goal it aimed to reach. This movement is also known as optical realism because the primary purpose of impressionist works was to show the effect of light on subject’s manifestation (Gunderson 65). The main idea of the movement was that “a human eye is a marvellous instrument” that can see any subject in different perspectives (Salmi 97). The ideal for Impressionists was a raw vision rather than rationalism. In this case, both Romanticism and Impressionism were against rationalism. The main techniques of Impressionist paintings included thick brush strokes that outlined the body of the subject with the help of such technique as impasto. Paintings were characterised by numerous colours that the artists never mixed. The main tool of impression was lighting. That is why artists often drew at different times of the day in order to get the diversity of perspectives (Gunderson 68).

In order to understand the contrast between two movements, the artistic approaches to paintings by Monet and Goya have to be analyzed. Goya followed the main trends of his movement and tried to reflect human nature in his works creating picturesque portraits (Rosenthal 56). In this regard, his artistic works are characterised by the complexity of his mental state and understanding of reality. As many Romanticists, he showed his own emotions in the works, particularly in the late dark stage of his career. Yet, his early work can be characterised by the attention to details and realistic reflections on the human body in its full complexity (Facos 123). In one of the most famous works of this period The Nude Maja 1800, Goya demonstrated attention to the details of a human body. Goya also used the game of light and shadow in order to concentrate the viewers’ attention on the target object – the naked body of a beautiful woman. In this way, the background is dark without any specific detail, while the woman’s body seems as it is glowing; it is achieved by the use of different shades of pale colours that greatly contrasted with the dark background and the intensity of the colours of the bedcover (Rosenthal 55). In this regard, Goya demonstrates such aspects of Romanticism as the play of light and shadow, centralisation of the subject, the use of dark colours to intensify the impression, combination of soft and harsh lines, attention to details (Salmi 92).

As it was mentioned above, Impressionists together with Monet used entirely different approach to painting techniques. Monet’s “Morning on the Seine IV” shows this approach and difference between Impressionism and Romanticism in the best way. Monet did not use contrast in order to pay attention to the primary subject of the painting; the entire composition was the primary subject like the eye would catch it. Monet used bright colours: different shades of blue and light yellow (Gunderson 112). There are no dark colours to show the shadow or contrast effect, Monet gained the distinction between the objects through the use of shades of the same colour. The lines are all soft, and transition from the surface of the lake to trees and clouds is smooth (Salmi 93).

Like most of the Impressionists, Monet did not like black colour; he preferred the mixture of the available colours in order to create the desired shade (Gunderson 72). Therefore, except for the specific brush strokes, Impressionists’ paintings seemed to be bright and full of colour and smooth transitions; as for Romanticists, they preferred to use contrast, dark colours, detailed contours of the images (Rosenthal 61). Romanticists liked to work indoors with maximum light available because they wanted to create an artificial lighting in the painting; Impressionists worked outdoors and used the natural light to create the necessary lighting perspective of their artworks (Gunderson 78). Another serious difference between two movements was that Impressionists basically painted nature and various landscapes and avoided human portraits, when Romanticists were interested in the variety of subjects in their works (Facos 125).

One more distinctive feature of the two movements is their correlation between the painter’s desire and the message that they sent to a viewer. In this regard, Romanticism wanted to explore the human nature and show it through two lenses: the author’s subjective perspective on the human nature and the features outlined in the described image (Salmi 91). As a result, the audience would have ambiguous understanding: the one that the author tried to convey and the symbolical one carried by the subject because of its epic meaning like John Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott, 1888 (Rosenthal 39). It is clear that Romanticism aimed to bring together various aspects of human nature and the diversity of its aspects to stimulate thinking.

In fact, Impressionism was doing exactly the same even though considering human perception of the surrounding world and the place of a human being in it. In order to stimulate human thinking on the nature of things, impressionists paid attention to different perceptions of what a human eye could see depending on the change of lighting or focus. The intention was to find out the aspects of understanding ordinary things. In this regard, Impressionism often forced the viewer to feel the fullness of surrounding environment. Thus, both Romanticism and Impressionism aimed to stimulate viewers’ thinking on the nature of things; however, it was carried out in different ways (Facos 124). Obviously, Romanticist was predominantly an individualist in its concentration. That is why various individual interpretations and subjective purposes were often counter-productive and conflicting; it usually created more questions than answers. Impressionism carted more freedom of interpretation with the lack of subjectivity; it made the artworks more aesthetical than symbolical in its nature (Salmi 84).

Overall, from all mentioned above, it is necessary to say that although both movements are rebellious trends against the current status quo in art and aim to change human perception of life, they were different in means and emphases of the achievement of their goal. Romanticism was human-centred in its essence and showed the diversity of human subjective interpretations and inner self-exploration. On the other hand, Impressionism was about regarding the variety of nature phenomena in their non-artificial aspects based only on the perspective of a human eye.  Romanticism can be viewed as human search of self-realisation, while Impressionism focuses on studying the surrounding nature through human aesthetic experience.

Works Cited

Facos, Michelle. An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Art. London: Routledge, 2011. Print.

Gunderson, Jessica. Impressionism. Mankato: Creative Education, 2009. Print.

Rosenthal, Leon. Romanticism. New York: Parsktone Press International, 2008. Print.

Salmi, Hannu. 19^th Century Europe: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008. Print.