Romanticism and Realism
Romanticism is a counterpoint to Neoclassicism: "The aesthetic faculty is... [no longer] the prisoner of the clear and distinct" (Ernest Cassirer, quoted in our text). Romanticism favors:
Remoteness over proximity
Originality over virtuosity
Ambiguity over definition
Imagination over intellect
Feeling over formality
Three ideas of particular importance to the Romantic sensibility:
Orientalism (read "Crosscurrents" box on p. 263)
The American wilderness as a pristine Eden
The "Romantic Hero"
I. Romantic Painting
A. Francisco Goya: Family of Charles IV (1800); The Third of May, 1808 (1814)
B. Theodore Gericault: The Raft of the Medusa (1818); how does this painting also express neoclassical influence?
C. Eugene Delacroix: Scenes from the Massacres at Chios (1824); Odalisque (1845)
D. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres: La Grande Odalisque (1814); compare to Delacroix
E. John Constable: The Haywain (1821)
F. J. M. W. Turner: The Slave Ship (1840)
G. Thomas Cole: American Lake Scene (1844)
F. Frederic Church: Twilight in the Wilderness (1860)
II. Philosophy
A. Rousseau and the "self" (contrast with Swift, Voltaire, Hobbes)
B. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Transcendentalism
C. Henry David Thoreau: Walden (1854)
III. Romantic Literature
A. Novelists and Playwrights
1. Herman Melville: Moby Dick (1851)
2. Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
3. Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights (1847); Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre (1847)
4. Johann Goethe: Faust (1808)
3. Gothic horror: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818); Edgar Allen Poe: poems and tales (pre-1850); Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
B. Poets
1. William Blake
2. John Keats
3. Walt Whitman
4. Emily Dickinson
IV. Romantic Music
A. Program music; the idee fixe
B. Hector Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
C. Frederic Chopin: Nocturne in E-Flat Major
D. Tchaikovsky and Romantic Ballet
Realism: "Increasingly, after the Revolution of 1789, it was no longer the aristocracy that made history, it was the working class itself, ordinary people. And so it was to the lives of the working class that Realist art turned for its inspiration. Among the common people, artists could discover and reveal the forces that were driving the times" (Benton and DiYanni, p. 278).
I. Politics
A. The July Monarchy (1830)
B. Marx, Engels and the Communist Manifesto (1848)
II. Realist Painting
A. Eugene Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People (1830)
B. Honore Daumier: Rue Transonain (1834)
C. Rosa Bonheur: Plowing the Nivernais (1849)
D. Gustave Courbet: A Burial at Ornans (1849), The Painter's Studio (1855)
E. Edouard Manet: Luncheon on the Grass (1863), Olympia (1863); compare to Romantic Odalisques
F. Winslow Homer: Prisoners from the Front (1866)
G. Thomas Eakins: The Swimming Hole (1883)
III. Photography: the democratizing of the visual image
A. William Talbot and Louis Daguerre: the Daguerreotype (1839)
B. Felix Tournachon a.k.a. Nadar: "Raising Photography to the Heights of Art" (1863 lithograph by Daumier)
C. Matthew Brady: the very unromantic reality of the American Civil War
D. Eadweard Muybridge, Thomas Eakins: photography as the analysis of movement
E. George Eastman of Rochester, NY: the Kodak box camera (1888); "You press the button and we do the rest"
IV. Architecture and the new technology of iron
A. The Crystal Palace (1851)
B. The Statue of Liberty (1884)
C. The Eiffel Tower (1889)
V. Realist Literature
A. Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary (1857)
B. Emile Zola: The Grog Shop (1877), Nana (1880), et al.
C. Kate Chopin: The Story of an Hour (late 19th c.)
D. Henrik Ibsen (playwright): A Doll's House (1879)
VI. Science
A. Louis Pasteur
B. Charles Darwin: from natural selection to "social Darwinism"