ART Appreciation/Education "class" #3: van Gogh and Cezanne

6/9/05 | republicanprofessor

[Labyrinthos]

Your definitions and examples are very helful. I wonder whether the critics of the time were complimentary of emerging styles. For example, did they embrace Romanticism or reject it as a perversion of neoclassicism?

[struggle]

I always love pointiallism too. It seemed like Seurat was painting a TV image or a newspaper picture.

[Republicanprofessor]

I wonder whether the critics of the time were complimentary of emerging styles. For example, did they embrace Romanticism or reject it as a perversion of neoclassicism?

A very good question, and I've been thinking about it (especially since Romanticism is not my speciality). I think that often the critics who panned works that later became established have been lost to history (due to their lack of foresight).

However, John Ruskin is a notable critic who was a champion of Turner's work but who did not appreciate Whistler's work. Both artists share (to me) a similar dissolution of form, but Ruskin wrote about Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket that Whistler "had thrown a paint pot in the face of the public." Whistler sued for libel and, after a notorious trial (which Whistler relished), Whistler won. But since he only won a farthing (a penny), he was bankrupted by the court costs. However, he did win the right of an artist to paint whatever they want (over half-a-century before Pollock became even more liberal with paint pots!).

Which of these works do you think is more abstract?

Turner Sunset 1840 and Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket about 1890.

[Republicanprofessor]

Oops. Forgot a paragraph designation in the above post. Turner's Sunset is on the left and Whistler on the right.

[Labyrinthos]

Which of these works do you think is more abstract?.

Good question. I think "Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket about 1890" is more abstract, if only because I had to think a few seconds more to set the basic scene.