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Week 5: Realism and Impressionism

For this week's discussion, choose realism or impressionism as a basis for your posts and discuss how your choice is manifested in any area of the humanities (i.e., painting, sculpture, literature, music, etc.), and give an example from any discipline in the humanities to illustrate how realism or impressionism influenced the work of art. Please be sure to give an analysis of how the work of art was influenced by the movement.

From student: PF

Dear Professor and classmates,

I’ve chosen Realism as my topic for discussion this week.

The world of art took a change in the mid-19th century where there was a new concept stating that art should be a representation or reflection of the daily activities of common people. Realism as a movement was used by the artists of this era to present the unembellished truth while using the working class as their subjects. It’s worth mentioning that prior to this movement those particular topics or subjects weren’t included in art.

Due to the Industrial Revolution in Europe, there was an upsurge in the working-class people who became known as the “proletariat” (Sayre, 2013 p. 411). Proletariat by definition is the laboring class who without the mean to produce ended up by selling their labor in order to sustain their own life along with their families. With that said, it was clear that there was a true disparity between them, the working-class and the company owners known as “the bourgeoisie”.

As a result many reformist, and writers such as Charles Dickens engaged in Literary Realism as a way to describe the inequality which existed in Europe at that time. In other words it is aimed to characterize and expose familiar topics exactly the way they truly are. Also, Honoré de Balzac in La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy) which is a compilation of 92 tales and novels includes characters from all walks of life. Balzac used a genre of writing whereas characters were reappearing form novel to novel with Le Père Goriot (Father Goriot) being the first one (Sayre, 2013 p. 412).

On the same token, Realistic Artists such as Honoré Daumier were focused on everyday life reality. He used his talent in lithography to satirize the bourgeoisie and the justice system (Sayre, 2013 p. 414). Daumier has done some impressive political caricatures as well. During my research, I found some which included some humor due to the way that Daumier were portraying the person or group of people he chose to ridiculed. On the other hand, some of Daumier's lithographs were done to allow some reflection and were rather thought provoking.

Our textbook has a quite disturbing lithograph from Daumier, which I’ve copied below, depicting the injustice and dreadful event which took place during the unrest of workers in Paris in 1836. The print shows the murder of an entire working-class extended family by the French army. This killings took place based on the belief that gunshots from 12 rue Transnonain apparently killed a police officer.

Fig. 13.7 Honoré Daumier, Rue Transonain, April 15, 1834.

References:

Realism-Literature Periods & Movements. Retrieved: http://www.online-literature.com/periods/realism.php

Sayre, H.M. (2013). Discovering the Humanities (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson

The World of Honore Daumier. Retrieved: https://www.daumier.org/