Западноевропейское искусство от Хогарта до Сальвадора Дали

Джозеф Мэллорд Уильям Тернер был типичным романтиком. К нему рано пришло признание. С пятнадцатилетнего возраста он участвовал в ежегодных выставках Королевской Академии искусств. Жизнь Тернера полна загадок. В свои многочисленные путешествия Тернер часто уезжал тайно.

Наследие художника велико: более 21000 произведений на исторические, мифологические, жанровые сюжеты, но главное – пейзажи. Он тщательно изучал природу. Тернеру были нужны лишь некоторые стороны видимой реальности, от которой могла отталкиваться его фантазия, создающая пейзаж, существующий только в его воображении. Стихией Тернера было море, движение туч, бушующие стихии. Передача световых эффектов, возникающих во влажной атмосфере были главной его задачей. Тернера интересовали мгновенные изменения в природе, впечатление от света и воздуха, поиск передачи которого через несколько десятков лет захватят целое поколение живописцев.

VI. Summarize the text.

VII. Topics for discussion.

1. Turner's mode of life and system of production.

2. Turner's style and colour.

3. Turner's artistic influence.

Unit IX Courbet (1819-1877)

The most aggressive apostle of the new school was Gustave Courbet. Born in the bleak village of Ornans in the mountainous region of eastern France, he came to Paris determined to create a lasting effect on the art of the capital, not only through his devotion to concrete reality, but also through his study of the art of the past. Courbet was a strong republican and champion of working-class rights and ideas. Courbet wanted his art to embody his ideas concerning society. At the start Courbet was completely consistent. «The art of painting should consist only in the representation of objects which the artist can see and touch…» he declared; «I hold that the artists of the century are completely incapable of reproducing the things of a preceding or a future century… It is for this reason I reject history painting when applied to the past. History painting is essentially contemporary.»

Courbet's paintings were concerned with events of his own time. The Stone Breakers, of 1849, fully embodied his artistic and social principles, and caused a scandal when it was exhibited at the Salon of 1850. A public accustomed to the grandiloquence of the Neo-classicists and the Romanticists did not understand such a direct and hard study of reality. Courbet depicted the dehumanising labour of breaking stones into gravel for road repairs, undertaken by an old man and a boy with perfect dignity. Proudhon, a Socialist writer, called it a parable from the Gospels. The simplicity of the relief-like composition is deeply Classical. Yet its objectivity betrays Courbet's own devotion to the new art of photography, which he practised as an amateur. The power of Courbet's compositions was matched by the workmanliness of his methods. His paint was first laid on with the palette knife. When the knife-work was dry, he worked up the surface with effects of light and colour with a brush, but it is the underlying palette-knife construction that gives his figures their density and weight.

In the same Salon of 1850 Courbet showed A Burial at Ornans, which fulfilled his requirements for true history painting. The inescapable end of an ordinary inhabitant of the village is represented with sober realism. Accompanied by altar boys, pallbearers, and women the parish priest reads the Office for the Dead before the open grave, around which stand family and friends some with handkerchiefs to their eyes. The canvas, about twenty-two feet long, was so large that the artist could not step back in his studio to see the whole work. In a great S-curve in depth, the figures stand with the simple dignity of the Apostles in Masaccio's Tribute Money. Locked between the rocky escarpment above and the grave beneath, these people realise their destiny is bound to the earth, yet they seem to comprehend and to accept their fate. Each face is painted with all of Courbet's dignity and sculptural density recalling the prophets of Donatello. This is one of the strongest and noblest works of all French painting.