See what “Naturalism (painting)” is in other dictionaries. Western European culture of the 19th century Naturalism paintings by famous artists
This term is familiar to us and seems quite understandable. But if we talk about it in relation to artistic creativity, then its meaning becomes somewhat contradictory and even multivariate.
But first things first.
We remember from school that a realistic image is an objective depiction of reality as it really is. But since the author of a work of art depicts reality subjectively, i.e. the way he sees and understands it, then here we can say that realism in the narrow sense is understood positivism– the philosophical doctrine that the only source of true, valid knowledge is empirical research. Empiricism recognizes the source of knowledge not from reason, but from sensory experience. So, it turns out that a realist artist depicts reality as he sees it. But you must admit that if several people see the same picture or situation, they will describe (or draw) it differently. This is where the uncertainty of the boundaries of realism lies.
The question may arise: is impressionism realism in this case? After all, impressionist artists depicted nature as they saw it, in all the diversity of the play of colors and light and shade? We will answer this question positively: of course, it is.
The term “realism” belongs to the French literary critic J. Chanfleury; he was the first to use it in the 50s of the 19th century. to denote art that opposes romanticism and academicism).
It is believed that realism continued its existence in two directions: naturalism And impressionism and manifested itself in various forms of art: literature, painting, music. We will look at it using painting as an example.
Naturalism (from Latin nаtura – nature)
J. Bastien-Lepage “The Fisherman's Children”
Naturalists sought to capture modern reality as accurately as possible, in particular the daily life of the peasantry and working class. Currently this can be done using a camera. Naturalists were characterized by photography. French artist Gustave Courbet(1819-1877) opened his personal exhibition “Pavilion of Realism” in Paris in 1855, and he is considered one of the founders of realism in painting.
G. Courbet “Windwinners” (1853)
Subsequently, the social-critical and satirical components in the works of naturalists faded into the background, because Photography began to dispassionately record reality, and a little later impressionism began to receive increasing recognition.
Impressionism (from the French impression - impression)
We talk about impressionism in more detail in a separate article. Now we will give only a general description.
Representatives of this direction sought to most naturally and vividly capture the real world in its mobility and variability, to convey their fleeting impressions. The term “impressionism” initially had a disparaging connotation - the critic Louis Leroy wrote the feuilleton “Exhibition of the Impressionists.” At this exhibition there was a painting Claude Monet"Impression. Sunrise" (“Impression, soleil levant”). This name of the painting later became the term.
Claude Monet "Impression. Sunrise" (1872). Marmottan-Monet Museum, Paris
Impressionism focuses on superficiality, the fluidity of a moment, mood, lighting, or angle of view. It does not aim to depict social problems or satire. For impressionism, what is depicted in the picture is not so important, but how it is depicted is important.
So, realism manifested itself in different ways and in different countries: in Russia - in the work of the Peredvizhniki, in Italy - verismo, macchiaioli, in Australia - the Heidelberg school, in the USA - the trash can school, in France - the Barbizon school.
Verism (from Italian vero – true, truthful)
Back in the 17th century. this term was used in fine arts to denote the realistic direction in Baroque painting. In the second half of the 19th century. the term was revived as a designation for the realistic and naturalistic movement in Italian art. In the field of literature, the most vivid and complete expression verism received in the novel and short story.
Telemaco Signorini "Street Scene" (1881)
Verismo is reflected in music in the operas of Mascagni, Puccini and Leoncavallo.
Macchiaioli (from Italian macchia - spot)
Macchiaioli- a group of Italian artists formed in Florence by the early 1860s. Almost all Macchiaioli representatives were former participants in the national liberation movement under the leadership of Garibaldi. They considered academicism a frozen phenomenon in art and contrasted it with the direct connection of their art with modernity. The subjects of their works are episodes of the War of Independence, portraits of its participants, genre scenes, landscapes.
Giovanni Fattori "Haystacks"
They often worked en plein air (in the open air). Macchiaioli's works are characterized by vitality, laconicism, and a free combination of rich color spots. The Macchiaioli had a great influence on all Italian painting of the late 19th century. By the 1880s the movement collapsed, some artists turned to impressionism.
Barbizon School
Troyon "Going to the Market"
This was the name of a group of French landscape painters. The school got its name from the village of Barbizon in the Fontainebleau forest, where Rousseau, Millet and some other representatives of the group lived for a long time. The artists of the school relied on the traditions laid down by Dutch and French landscape painters. The work of the Barbizons was also influenced by their contemporaries who did not belong to the group: Corot, Courbet, Delacroix.
Diaz "The Old Mill near Barbizon"
What is the difference between the landscapes of the followers of the Barbizon school and the landscapes of artists of other movements? The fact is that landscape was given different meanings. For example, in academic painting, the landscape existed mainly as a background against which the plot of the painting unfolded. But among the romantics, the landscape was embellished. The Barbizonians advocated a realistic landscape of their homeland with everyday motives, with the participation of ordinary people engaged in labor. Representatives of the Barbizon school: Rousseau, Dupre, Diaz, Millet, Daubigny, Troyon, etc., it is impossible to accurately outline their circle. The famous Russian landscape painters F. Vasiliev, I. Levitan, A. Savrasov showed interest in the work of the Barbizonians.
Heidelberg School (Australian art movement of the late 19th century)
Frederick McCubbin "Letter" (1884)
This school is otherwise called Australian impressionism. The movement was founded by artists Arthur Streeton and Walter Holke. Participants in this movement painted en plein air in an impressionistic manner. The school was named after an area east of Melbourne called Heidelberg.
There are more than 20 artists of this school. They were influenced by the Impressionist movement and borrowed many concepts from them: depicting everyday life against the backdrop of nature, the ability to capture a moment and convey it with paint, to capture the effect of lighting, contrast, etc. But these artists should not be perceived as merely copyists of Western art. They skillfully and lovingly depicted their Australian landscape, showing its distinctive features.
Walter Holke "After a Hot Day" (1891)
Trash Can School
An artistic movement that emerged in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century. Most of the work of the school's representatives is devoted to a realistic depiction of the everyday life of poor and working-class neighborhoods of New York. The founders and largest representatives of the school are considered to be Robert Henry, John Sloan, Edward Hopper and others. At that time, cameras were not yet used for operational filming of incidents. So newspapers hired artists to sketch illustrations for their stories.
John Sloan "McSorley's Bar" (1912)
Mostly they depicted the unsightly sides of city life. This gave impetus to the emergence and development of American realism. The main objects of their sketches were the streets with their typical representatives of that time: street children, street musicians and actors, immigrants, etc.
As usual, any method has its supporters and its opponents. Some see the truth of life and an objective assessment of reality in the work of realists; others believe that there is nothing valuable in accurately recording real events and calling it artistic creation.
The question “what is naturalism” is one of the most difficult in science, since quite often this direction is confused with realism in general and the art of photography in particular. Therefore, it is necessary to clearly understand the differences between these two movements and clearly differentiate them, because understanding the peculiarities of the development of culture in the second half of the 19th century depends on this. First of all, you should remember the circumstances and prerequisites for the emergence of new ideas about the tasks of the artist, writer and director.
Conditions of appearance
Understanding what naturalism is is impossible without taking into account the social situation of the second half of this century. During the time under review, fundamental changes took place in science, which greatly influenced the creative intelligentsia of Europe and America. At this time, the dominant trend was positivism, which assumed the study of nature and society not on the basis of abstract mental constructs, but with the help of concrete facts. Therefore, many scientists abandoned theoretical research and moved on to a detailed analysis of specific phenomena. This principle was quickly picked up by a number of cultural figures, in particular, it was actively developed by the famous writer E. Zola in his works. According to the new concept, the artist now had to depict reality as it is, without embellishment and conventions, following the rules of pure, positive, experimental science.
Subjects
The study of the problem “What is naturalism” should be continued by analyzing new ideas that representatives of the new direction began to pursue. They began to describe and explain the psychology and character of a person by the characteristics of his physiology, race, as well as external conditions of existence. Revealing his complex, contradictory nature and moral quests ceased to interest adherents of the new movement. They were much more interested in human pathologies, social conflicts, and the brutal struggle for survival. For some time, these ideas took a leading place in painting and literature. A distinctive feature of naturalism is satisfaction with life and reluctance to change anything. If romanticism seeks a solution to problems in escapism from reality, realism offers more or less specific measures to improve human coexistence, then the new genre stops at what it depicts, what its shortcoming is. Nevertheless, naturalist authors pursue the idea that, with all its imperfections, the world is still more or less stable, and therefore everything in it deserves attention, even the most unsightly details.
Peculiarities
To better understand what naturalism is, we need to remember the conditions of the time in which it arose. were no longer of interest to the creative intelligentsia, who were looking for new forms of expressing their thoughts. Revolutions, social upheavals, wars, which were particularly cruel, which marked the second half of the 19th century, could not help but affect Representatives of the new trend abandoned all conventions and often began to depict rough scenes from life. A characteristic feature of the movement was the deaestheticization of art. Artists and writers described and reproduced the negative aspects of human existence, believing that in this way they demonstrated objective reality. Unfortunately, this trend often led to the appearance of works that are difficult to classify as art, since they were particularly crude and unsightly in plot and form. Great importance was attached to the depiction of man in the material world. Artists paid attention to his appearance, and writers - to his physiology and instincts.
Ideological basis
A new movement in art and culture did not arise out of nowhere. He had his own philosophy that inspired his supporters. It is significant that its first manifestations date back to ancient times, when some thinkers explained all the phenomena of reality, including the very personality of man, by the nature surrounding him (Epicurus, representatives of Stoicism). In modern times, this ideology was developed in the work of a number of philosophers and authors of educational literature. They pointed out that the essence of naturalism comes down to deriving everything that happens from concrete facts of nature. Some authors even tried to consider ethical concepts through the prism of man's struggle for existence. These thinkers paid attention to natural instincts, the struggle of people for survival.
In prose
Naturalism in literature puts human character as the object of depiction in connection with the description of everyday and material conditions of existence. Writers were inclined to explain the behavior of a person by heredity and physiological characteristics. A distinctive feature of the work of a number of authors was the imitation of scientific methods, which, unfortunately, led to the impoverishment of opportunities. Another disadvantage of this genre was the lack of ideology and a critical attitude towards any kind of ideologies in any manifestations, which, as we know, formed the backbone of romanticism and realism.
Naturalism in literature is associated primarily with the name of the French author Zola. The main theme of his work was the depiction of the disordered life of the bourgeoisie. He focused on the everyday side of his heroes’ existence. However, in his works, despite the apparent roughness of the images and plots, there is a philosophy of its own, which distinguishes this writer among his colleagues.
Examples in the literature
Representatives of naturalism made a significant contribution to the development of world literature. Guy de Maupassant was the most prominent representative of this movement. He was a master of short prose and the creator of a whole series of famous short stories. It is significant that this writer rejected pure naturalism, but at the same time he himself sought to achieve almost documentary accuracy in the depiction of events. He abandoned the analysis of human psychology and limited himself to only listing facts from the lives of the heroes. At the same time, he was distinguished by his extreme sensitivity to everything around him, which was reflected in his works, due to which the latter acquired pan-European fame.
In painting
In the 1870s, naturalism took shape in the visual arts. The photo became a kind of model for artists who sought the most authentic picture. At the same time, they tried to abstract themselves as much as possible from the depicted object, trying to avoid conveying emotions, which, of course, did not always work. Landscape and portrait painters tried to convey this or that phenomenon to the viewer as objectively as possible, without embellishment or aesthetic conventions. One of the prominent representatives of the new direction of painting was the French artist
He is considered to be the founder of impressionism, which quickly supplanted the trend in culture under consideration, but he began by reproducing the depicted object with photographic accuracy. One of his most famous paintings, which depicts a bar worker, is striking in its specificity and detail.
This was exactly what naturalism strived for. The photo has become a real standard of work for its adherents.
Other representatives
One of the shortcomings of the direction under consideration was the lack of artistic and ideological generalizations. The plots were not subjected to philosophical understanding, as well as critical evaluation and processing, which was characteristic of realism. However, the new trend had a number of advantages: reliable reproduction of reality, accurate rendering of details and details.
In addition to the indicated artist, E. Degas worked in this style. His paintings are imbued with simplicity and harmony, which distinguishes the author’s paintings from the works of those who preferred to depict rough scenes from simple life. Degas preferred to work in pastels, which made him stand out noticeably among his contemporaries. The features of naturalism were especially clearly manifested in the work of A. Lautrec.
In cinema
19th century naturalism influenced film making. Already the first directors of the newly emerging cinema began to apply its techniques in their practice. One of the first such films was the film adaptation of Zola’s novel “The Beast Man.” In modern films you can quite often find elements of this style, especially in action and horror films. An example is the movie “Fight Club”, in which there are a lot of scenes of violence and cruelty. Recent premieres show that directors are still interested in this direction.
For example, the recently released war film “Hacksaw Ridge,” which is replete with brutal scenes. So, the movement in question greatly influenced world cinema.
Comparison with the previous direction
The question of what is the essence of the difference between naturalism and realism, as a rule, causes serious difficulties among schoolchildren, since both movements at first glance have much in common. Their goal is to reproduce the phenomena of life with objective reliability and accuracy. Adherents of the directions sought to give a truthful picture of the surrounding reality, but achieved their goal in different ways. Realists looked for typical features in the depicted object, which they comprehended, generalized and presented in individual images. Naturalists initially set out to copy the observed phenomenon and deliberately abandoned philosophy. Perhaps this is precisely the fundamental difference between naturalism and realism.
Differences in subject matter
Both directions strive for truthful reproduction of the phenomena of social reality. In this respect, they can be contrasted with romanticism, which, on the contrary, takes the reader into a beautiful world of dreams and fantasy. However, adherents of both movements in culture saw this very reality differently. When depicting everyday life, realists emphasized the spiritual world of man; they were interested in the struggle of the individual with the bourgeois life. They focused on how people maintained their spirituality in difficult conditions. Naturalists, on the contrary, were interested exclusively in the physiology and social conditions that, in their opinion, determined human existence. In connection with these differences, realism and naturalism use different artistic and visual means. Those who were adherents of the first movement used many techniques when recreating an object of interest to them, while representatives of the new movement limited themselves linguistically, avoiding metaphors and epithets, because they believed that they distracted readers from specific facts.
New features
When it comes to what critical naturalism is, the analogy with realism usually comes to mind. This direction not only sought to accurately depict reality, but also to criticize its shortcomings. The authors often raised pressing social issues and touched on current issues of our time. At the same time, they often ridiculed the vices of society, using satire techniques. The same can be said about naturalism. However, if realist writers tried to understand the causes of socio-economic problems and even proposed solutions, then the authors, who limited themselves to only listing the shortcomings of the depicted subject, simply stated specific facts, which, of course, was not always enough for a complete and objective depiction of a particular plot . It should be remembered that naturalism is a direction that does not pretend to provide philosophical understanding and generalizations. He only reproduces the object of interest to him with photographic, almost documentary accuracy. Perhaps this is why this trend is one of the most controversial in culture, which did not last too long.
In Russian art
In our country, the same stages of development went through. Naturalism, on the contrary, did not become widespread in Russia. Some authors explain this by the peculiarities of Russian culture and mentality, pointing to patriarchy and a high degree of spirituality. Nevertheless, some features of the movement in question were nevertheless reflected in a number of works of literature and some films. Thus, the books of the writer D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak were written under the obvious influence of this style. The author depicted the life of the population of the Urals, describing how the post-reform times led to a change in public consciousness, a breakdown of the usual foundations and morality.
Another prose writer, P. D. Bobrykin, was an obvious imitator of Zola’s work. In one of his most famous works, he reproduced with almost scientific precision the details of merchant life, the life of nobles, and described their housing. In Soviet times, naturalism was seen as the opposite of realism, so many critics had a negative attitude towards the techniques and methods of its representatives. In their opinion, the authors emphasized the dark sides of human existence, while Soviet propaganda cultivated the idea of constructive human activity in building communism.
But, despite the negative attitude towards naturalism, the direction in question was reflected in Soviet cinema. For example, A. Konchalovsky’s epic film “Siberiada” was filmed under the strong influence of naturalism. This film received recognition in the West. In this film, the director showed the not very attractive sides of people's lives in a remote, remote Siberian village at the turn of the era.
Meaning
Naturalism in art played a big role in the development of culture in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The desire of writers and artists to move away from some formal conventions and rules, combined with an active search for new forms of expression of ideas and the desire to reproduce the phenomena of the surrounding reality as accurately as possible, led to new original solutions in the artistic word and means of representation. Some representatives of the movement still retained some philosophy in their works, which, combined with a convincing description of the life of ordinary people, allowed them to create memorable works in literature, painting and cinema.
By the middle of the 19th century. Other artistic movements are gaining strength. For them, the embodiment of not only the tragedy of an individual person, but also the life story of broad social strata, becomes significant.
If realism was imbued with a “longing for the ideal,” naturalism is completely devoid of any ideal poetry of human values. In contrast to realism, imbued with the spirit of sociality, naturalism reduced human essence and the meaning of existence only to biological motives, and explained the formation of character and destinies only by the environment of existence. The creativity of representatives of naturalism affirmed the inevitability of rough reality, the suppression of man by the everyday devastating stream of life, and at the same time elevated the role of the subconscious in man to the Absolute. All this led to fatalism and pessimism. Drach G.V. Culturology. - Rostov n/d: “Phoenix”, 1996. - p. 281
Naturalism became not only a natural antagonist of the art of romanticism and classicism, but also opposed itself to realism, with its artistic selection, typification, and search for social conditioning. Lisakovsky I. N. Artistic culture. Terms. Concepts. Meanings. Dictionary-reference book. - M.: Publishing house RAGS, 2002. - p.112
Representatives of naturalism proceeded from the position that a person’s fate is predetermined by his social environment and heredity. The art of this movement was significantly influenced by positivism with its pedantic description of facts and rejection of excessive theorizing. The literature of naturalism, studying human behavior, tries to be similar to science in its methods. Most often this trend in literature is associated with the names of Zola and Maupassant. In painting, artists such as Courbet and Millet. They turn to images from the social, lower classes of society. The sources of a person’s moral attitudes are sought exclusively in heredity or in the influence of the external environment. These reasons, according to naturalists, fatally determine the fate of a person. In the works of adherents of naturalism, there is no depth of psychological analysis of the character that will become an artistic discovery of realism. A naturalist writer turns his work into a kind of photography, preserving all the details, but at the same time avoiding the author’s own position, from making a moral assessment. Ehrengross B. A. World artistic culture. - M.: Higher school, 2001. - p. 310
So, we can conclude that in the first half of the 19th century the following trends in artistic culture were present: classicism, romanticism, realism, naturalism. Classicism is a movement in the artistic culture of European countries in the 17th and early 19th centuries, striving for ancient ideals. In the 19th century, classicism was reborn into academicism.
Romantic art is characterized by: aversion to bourgeois reality, a decisive rejection of the rationalistic principles of bourgeois enlightenment and classicism, distrust of the cult of reason, which was characteristic of the enlighteners and writers of the new classicism.
Realism did not oppose romanticism, it was its ally in the struggle against the idealization of bourgeois social relations, for the national and historical originality of works of art (the flavor of place and time).
Naturalism did not strive for generalization and typification like realism. According to naturalists, an artist should reflect the world around him without any embellishment. Writers and naturalist artists claimed to tell “all the ins and outs” about a person.
Naturalism(in French naturalisme, from the Latin word “natura” - “nature”):
1) a trend in literature and art that developed in the last third of the 19th century. in Europe and the USA. The program of naturalism polemically emphasized the desire to liken the artistic knowledge of the world to its scientific study, the desire for an objective, dispassionate depiction of reality, primarily human characters, their conditioning by the physiological nature of man and the social environment surrounding him. Naturalism originated in French literature and literary criticism under the influence of the successes of experimental natural sciences, especially physiology and medicine. The philosophical basis of naturalism was the positivism of the French philosopher Auguste Comte and its refraction in the aesthetic theory of Hippolyte Taine, in the theory of evolution of the English sociologist Herbert Spencer.
The theory of naturalism as a literary school was developed in detail by Emile Zola, who headed the school of naturalist writers. Despite all the limitations of the creative method of naturalist writers who refused to generalize and analyze socio-economic problems in the LIFE of society, naturalism contributed to a sharp expansion of the range of themes and images, the formation of critical realism of the 19th century; interest in depicting the “social bottom”, in the functioning of various “social organisms” (mines, enterprises, markets, laundries, brothels), in the interaction of the individual and the crowd, has expanded. This gave rise to new means of artistic depiction of reality. Similar trends existed in the artistic culture of many countries (“verismo” in Italy, “regionalism” in the USA). The positivist revision of the realistic tradition of forming an artistic image, manifested in the literature and art of naturalism, led to the growth of impressionism, symbolism and decadence in the works of such writers as Guy de Maupassant and Georges Huysmans. Naturalism had a strong influence on the work of such artists in the last third of the 19th century. and the beginning of the 20th century, like Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Jules Bastien-Lepage, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Théophile Steinlen in France, Constantin Meunier in Belgium, Max Liebermann, Käthe Kollwitz in Germany, Francesco Paolo Michetti, Vincenzo Vela in Italy. However, naturalism in the fine arts did not take shape into a coherent, consistent movement;
2) in Soviet aesthetics and criticism of the 30s - 70s of the twentieth century naturalism explained as an artistic method, typologically opposed to realism as its antipode (as well as formalism). The main feature of naturalism was proclaimed to be a non-social, biological view of man, which corresponded to the passive registration of life phenomena and facts without their critical selection, ideological and philosophical comprehension and analysis; naturalism was identified with the dispassionate copying of life without its artistic generalization, with an increased interest in its dark (even pathological) sides. In this understanding, signs of naturalism were found in academic salon art (Paul Delaroche, Ernest Meissonnier), in the “rigioialism” of US painting, in such avant-garde movements as Dadaism,
- “Good News”, 1644, art. Philippe de Champaigne, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Baroque painting or baroque painting is a painting of the Baroque period in the culture of the 16th-17th centuries, while in political terms... ... Wikipedia
The word R. was used by French critics to name the direction in painting chosen by Courbet (1819-77) in opposition not only to the idealistic direction, but also to any other that chose subjects for paintings not from the surrounding modern society and... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Ephron
Petrus Christus. Portrait of a young lady. Around 1450. Berlin Art Gallery. Berlin Early Netherlandish painting (rarely Old Netherlandish... Wikipedia
This term has other meanings, see Realism. Edouard Manet. “Breakfast in the Studio” (1868) Realism, aesthetic position, with ... Wikipedia
- (Japanese Nippon, Nihon) I. General information Ya is a state located on the islands of the Pacific Ocean, near the coast of East Asia. The territory of Japan includes about 4 thousand islands, stretching from the northeast to the southwest for almost 3.5 thousand... ...
Sandro Botticelli. "Portrait of a young man with a medal of Cosimo de' Medici." 1470 1477. Uffizi, Florence Portrait of an Italian ... Wikipedia
- (USA) (United States of America, USA). I. General information The USA is a state in North America. Area 9.4 million km2. Population 216 million people. (1976, assessment). The capital is Washington. Administratively, the territory of the United States... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Portrait of John Henry, Margrave of Moravia. Peter Parler and the workshop. Between 1379 1386, St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague Portrait of the Middle Ages, portrait art of the Middle Ages, a stage of a certain decline in the history of development ... Wikipedia
Covers the period of the 9th century. BC e. Contents... Wikipedia
V. Favorsky (photo from the 1920s) ... Wikipedia
Books
- Creation. Man-beast. Articles, Émile Zola, The volume presents the widely known works of the classic French literature Émile Zola... Category: Classic and modern prose Series: Golden Fund of World Classics Publisher: AST, AST Moscow, Neoclassic,
- Naturalismus, Hamann R., Hermand J., Naturalistic painting, or rather, naturalism in painting, as an art direction of the late 19th century, is not limited to creating an image visually similar to nature. He is completely immersed in... Category: