SEEING and BEING SEEN
SUBJECTS and COMPOSITION in LATER 19th CENTURY ART
Leisure activities (dining, dancing, café-concerts, opera, ballet, strolling in parks and on the boulevards, etc.) among the expanding middle class (bourgeoisie) in modern industrialized Paris created a culture of “seeing and being seen.” That is, people had more free time and resources to be out in public, socializing and strolling. Different social classes were interacting more than ever, and even women were seen more in public that in previous times. In 19th literature there even developed a term to describe the male “strollers” and observers about town – the “Flâneur.” (Links to an external site.)
HISTORICAL PHOTO: Parisians at the Salon HISTORICAL PHOTO of the Bourgeoisie strolling HISTORICAL PHOTO of the flaneur
Historical images (print; photos) of the Parisian bourgeoisie in the later 19th century
This developing socio-cultural behavior influenced later 19th century French art in that it both provided new subjects (scenes from contemporary life) and inspired new ways of “seeing” and composing these scenes. For instance, artists interested in painting modern life often dismissed traditional framing, clear vantage points, and “serious” subjects (like historical, mythological, literary, etc.) in favor of uncentered and sometimes oddly cropped scenes of contemporary subjects captured from unusual angles or rendered with loose application of paint or with a strong interest in repetition and pattern rather than illusionism.
IMAGE: Mary Cassatt’s In the Loge IMAGE: Edgar Degas’s The Rehearsal IMAGE: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge
LEFT: Mary Cassatt, In the Loge, 1878 (IMAGE: https://collections.mfa.org/objects/31365 (Links to an external site.))
CENTER: Edgar Degas, The Rehearsal of the Ballet on Stage, c. 1874 (IMAGE: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436155 (Links to an external site.))
RIGHT: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892-95 (IMAGE: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/61128/at-the-moulin-rouge (Links to an external site.))
Your activity assignment this week is to:
demonstrate your awareness of “modern life” (i.e., the activities of “seeing and being seen” in public) in the later 19th What was “modern,” what was changing and why? depicted and expressed “modern life.”
draw connections between “modern life” and art.
You may wish to conduct a little more study of the context and art than provided by the textbook – here are a few good resources to scan. Of course feel welcome to explore others.
(NOTE: On Monday evening (11/1) I replaced a resource that had some access limitations. The replacement links are marked with an **.)
Cooper Hewitt (museum) exhibition, “To See and Be Seen” (Links to an external site.)
**The MET, “Impressionism: Art and Modernity” (Links to an external site.)
**The MET. “Japonisme” (Links to an external site.)
Khan Academy, “Impressionist pictorial space” (Links to an external site.)
Khan Academy, short essays and short videos on “Impressionism” (Links to an external site.)
The Art Story: Impressionism (Links to an external site.)
Please use one of the following artists (which should include an example work of art) to address how the artist and artwork you have chosen to focus on demonstrates the idea of “seeing and being seen”? What served as models or influenced the artist’s new approaches to composition.
Edgar Degas
August Renoir
Berthe Morisot
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec
You may complete this assignment using any presentation format you wish – a short essay/text document; a hand-drawn graphic; a computer generated graphic; an audio cast; a movie; a PowerPoint or other illustrated “slide” presentation, etc. Please be sure to properly cite your sources.
