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Impressionists
A movement in painting that originated in France in the 1860s, the term 'Impressionist' has been applied to a variety of artists whose work did not adhere to strictly defined principles but who shared a common outlook. Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Bazille, Pisarro, Cézanne, Dégas and Manet are the best-known painters of the Impressionist movement.
The Impressionists were rebelling against the academic teaching of art. They rejected not only the principles of classical art, but also the Romantic idea that art exists primarily to communicate the emotional state of the artist. They believed that this was a secondary consideration and took the realist view that the primary purpose of art is to record slices of life or nature as it is.
The Impressionists were not social realists, however. They were not interested in portraying ugly or drab scenes. Instead, their interest lay in beauty, whether it be found in Dégas' ballet dancers or Monet's landscapes.
Impressionist painting was, at first, greeted with horror. Commenting on an exhibition in 1876, Le Figaro stated, 'Five or six lunatics have met here to exhibit their works ... What a terrifying spectacle is this of human vanity stretched to the verge of dementia.'
Find out more …
Impressionism
www.impressionism.org/
Fun educational site with paintings and stories of the impact of this movement.
The Impressionists’ Paris by Ellen Williams (Little Bookroom, 2000) £10.
Many of these painters lived in a small area of Paris. Here is a tour of their local haunts, studios, homes, cafés.
Soviet socialist realism
The only theory and method in literature and art officially sanctioned in the Soviet Union from the early 1930s until the 1980s, socialist realism followed naturally, in some ways, from the Russian realism of the 19th century. Both schools believed that art should be a faithful mirror of life.
However, the earlier realists, such as the writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, believed that their work should offer an objective reflection of reality, and therefore criticism of society was central to their work. Soviet socialist realism, by contrast, was seen as a fundamental part of the building of a socialist, classless society. Thus it should emphasise the positive and optimistic aspects of society, admitting only minor imperfections.
Very few socialist realist works were successful. One notable exception is Nikolay Ostrovsky's novel How the Steel Was Tempered. It tells the largely autobiographical story of a hero, wounded in the October Revolution, who overcomes his ill health to become a inspirational Soviet writer.
In art, as in literature, Soviet socialist realism did not really reflect reality — its real role was propaganda. Its artists portrayed workers uniformly as young and fearless, handsome and athletic.
Find out more …
Soviet socialist realism at the New Gallery, Moscow
www.ngart.com/
Specialist Moscow gallery for this movement, displaying posters, drawings, paintings and applied arts.
Socialist Realist Painting by Matthew Cullerne Bown (Yale University Press, 1998) £75.
A detailed narrative of the complex doctrinal struggles to define and impose the artistic ideals of Soviet socialism.
Neo-realist film
Neo-realism was a literary and cinematic movement that flourished in Italy after World War II. Neo-realist directors such as Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti sought to deal realistically with the rise of Facism in Italy, as well as with the war itself and with the social problems that it left behind.
Neo-realist cinema has an almost documentary style. Directors often used real settings instead of artificial film sets, and chose ordinary people, rather than actors, to perform. The films often looked — and were — low budget and hastily put together. However, classics such asRossellini's Open City (1945), which dealt with the brutality imposed on wartime Italy by the Nazis, and his Paisà (1946), as well as de Sica's Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948), provided a refreshing departure from the escapism of traditional cinema. Neo-realism in cinema was shortlived: by the 1950s, Italian cinematographers were once more embracing fantasy.
However, the movement did have an impact on film-makers elsewhere in Europe, in the United States and even in India: Satyajit Ray, the Indian director, says that his view of film-making was forever changed by Bicycle Thieves.
Find out more …
Vittorio de Sica
www.spe.sony.com/classics/garden/crew/sica.html
Introduction to the work of Vittorio de Sica, who made two of the most significant films of the neo-realist movement, Bicycle Thieves and Shoeshine.
Cinema of Anxiety: A psychoanalysis of Italian Neorealism by Vincent F Rocchio (University of Texas Press, 1999: US edition only, available through online bookshops).
Lacanian theory explaining the drives behind Italy's neo-realist cinema.
Reality TV
Andy Warhol's prediction that, one day, everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame is becoming a more likely prospect through the explosion of Reality TV.
Although Reality TV took off as a popular phenomenon in the late 1990s, it has its antecedents in the fly-on-the-wall documentaries that became increasingly popular in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1991, MTV launched The Real World, which took six strangers, placed them in a house in San Francisco filled with cameras and filmed their lives. Admittedly, there was a certain falseness to The Real World as all the participants tended to be very attractive and usually intended to launch careers in film, music or fashion.
However, Reality TV did not come into its own until the advent of the Internet. Webcams allow us to observe people 24 hours a day. The likes of Survivor and Big Brother pit strangers against each other in a battle of wits and bitchiness, in an attempt to secure a cash prize or simply as an exercise in exhibitionism. The programmes are becoming ever more outlandish: Temptation Island, for example, takes four 'committed couples', splits the men from the women and sends them to separate camps populated by highly attractive, single members of the opposite sex — just to see if they can remain faithful.
Find out more …
Reality blurred
www.realityblurred.com
For Reality TV junkies — archive, history and gossip about what’s going on around the world, plus links to the show sites.
Confronting Reality by Richard Kilborn and John Izod (Manchester University Press, 1997) £12.99.
Guide and introduction to television documentary.