Urban Life

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Monet 'Boulevard de Capucines' (1873-4)

Context

  • Aerial perspective, flaneur of the city - boulevards due to Haussmannisation of Paris to stop revolution, Reniassance ideas of open space = order and harmony, modern omnibuses
  • Negative comment, trees leafless, Renoir -Impressionists regretted loss of historic buildings

Technique

  • Loose, sketchy, Leeroy: 'black tongues', lack of subject, trainsitory effects of light
  • Oil paints in tubes - vibrant impasto, 'the empheral, the fugatve, the contigent'

Influences

  • Photography - Nadar's studio, hot air balloon pictures, stereoscopic photots (3D)
  • Cropped/ snap-shot like, halation effect, monochromatic colouring, burnt out sky, dissolved focus
  • Japanese prints of modern life e.g. Hiroshige's 'Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge'
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Seurat 'La Chahut' (1889-90)

Context

  • Can-can in Cafe Chantant- urban working class entertainment
  • Flat design, lewd poster design for working class men e.g. Cheret's for Moulin Rouge and Japanese prints with sylised forms

Technique

  • Stylised, graphical, repetion of shapes, warm earthy, vivid colours
  • Optical colour mixing theories of Chevreul - seen from distance, varying light/ dark dots
  • Repeated diagonal lines- associated with joy

Modern Life

  • Signac: 'vivid perspective on the degeneration of our traditional era
  • Ruskin- corruption of the city, isolation of dancers, patron 'pig snouted' and voyeuristic
  • Bassist phallic connotations, limbs of dancers detached so are fetishised
  • Signac: 'dancers experience utoptian delight...audience is subjected to to dystopia of...lewd display'
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Caillebotte 'Le Pont de L'Europe' (1875)

Modern Influences

  • Iron bridge, Gare de Lazare- industrialisation, Haussman apartments in background
  • Photography- brother composed image, wide angle viewpoint and cropped, more sombre

Gender

  • Men dominate (masculine iron, steel), women hemmed, is the man with or looking at woman?
  • Top hat man self portrait - could look at other man, Broude int. of homosexuality
  • Dog = stray = STDs, rife in same-sex brothels, tail also symbol of gaze, sexual fustration

Class and Isolation

  • Working class man (smock, bowler hat) melancholy, looks over rails
  • Upper class couple - Caillebotte had inherited father's fortune
  • No one communicates - comment on isolation of city and segregation of class
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