1. Impressionism and the Middle & Lower Classes

Edouard Manet
Luncheon on the Grass
1863

Unlike the old Realists paintings, here was a wholly new subject matter: leisure time! Thanks to the

Industrial Revolution and machines, and burgeoning labor unions, people didn’t have to work 7 days a

week, and had some time to enjoy themselves. The concept of a weekend became common during this

period.

Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnières, 1884

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/avant-garde-france/post-impressionism/v/seurat-bathers-at-asni-res-1884

Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/avant-garde-france/realism/v/manet-a-bar-at-the-folies-bergre

Degas, Women Ironing, 1884

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
In the Salon at the Rue des Moulins,
1894

Pablo Picasso, Old Guitarist, 1903 Pablo Picasso, The Tragedy, 1903 Picasso, Blind Beggar With a Boy, 1903

Kathe Kollwitz, Unemployment, 1909

Paul Signac. In the Time of Harmony: The Golden Age Has Not Passed, It Is Still to Come , 1896

https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/308/3977

Question 1 – What does French Realist Honoré Daumier do in this picture in order to earn our

sympathies for the peasants. Does it work and is it effective? Address not only the narrative but also

compositional and formal decisions made by the artist to further his cause of Socialist (Leftist) politics.

El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919 Alexander Rodchenko, Books (Please)! In All Branches of Knowledge, 1924

Question 1 – Russian Constructivism is a Russian Revolution-era style (1917), developed by artists, architects and

designers. It features bold and blunt abstraction (in red, white and black only) but with an agenda; it is pro-

revolution. That is, these artists believed abstraction to be the best, freshest, most impactful style to glorify ideal

Communism in the eyes of the masses. (Continued)

Subsequent Communist governments also recognized the power of art to shape public

opinion. However, for them, the correct style was Russian Socialist Realism, as seen above.

It was the officially sanctioned style, from the mid-1920s to the 1990! (Continued)

Similar Communist politics, but two very different styles. Which style do YOU think

would be more effective as propaganda for the masses: abstraction or realism, and why?

Question 3 – Regarding last module’s artist Jean-Michel Basquait…

Basquait came from a lower socioeconomic background and, as a young graffiti artist,

ended up sleeping on the streets of New York. Just a few years later, he became the toast

of the town in New York’s very privileged, upper-class art world, but died of a heroin

overdose at 27. Do you think both his success and his demise are a factor of class? Why or

why not? Explain.