Perrault vs Racine

Perrault describes himself as modern

Photography has great impact on modern art
At the time it was thought that good art is that which copies old art
Age of Reason
1. Capacity to know Nature (development of infrastructures, schools, bridges, etc.)
2. Upheaval of the human conscience (the way of humanity thinking of itself,
development of valueless areas of knowledge like art history, emergence of art
critics)
3. Emergence of big museums (art wasnt anymore reserved to the aristocracy & the
emergence of the bourgeoisie which grew more and more)
4. Attacks against Religion (the more churches were emptied the more museums
became fuller, sociologists said that art would fill the role of the churches)
Kant: Critique of Pure Reason (not possible before Age of Reason)
- Critique of reason as part of thought, idea of examining the means of reason
- Big part of modern painters, the idea of searching for the meaning of art and
painting: a form of auto criticism
The city as a theatre of the modern life (Baudelaire / The birth of modernity)
Content: big increase in population in the city (mass production, rural exodus due to
the increasingly small need of labour, better health) but also a great solitude, a
disillusion resulted from the new way of life
- Its B. who sets the first definition of Modern Art, he is at the heart of change
concerning the city.
- B. invents the notion of flaneur (the lonely walker in the city, new to the epoch)
- B. wanted to take something poetic from the mode while conserving the eternal
and unchangeable -> that would be a work of art
- In talking about the dispute of the old, says that its necessary to study the methods
of the part but also not to forget the present, which brings originality
MODERN ART (-1960)
- Landmark for the rupture with Classical Art + Beginning of Modern Art
- Most of the protagonists of this period are dead (or else theyd maybe be
contemporaries)
Great Modern Thematics
1. The question of whats painting? is posed (a question that emerges with Modern
Art)
- Painting related to the idea of painting
- Art must represent a form of truth, implying that there is one to achieve
2. The machine (futurism)
3. The acknowledgement that painting is flat
- more than 400 years of perspective, of negation that painting is flat
- Painters of the 20th century will attempt understanding and composing a flat
painting
The redefinition of Art
- With this rupture with the past we must redefine Art

- Brancusi: touches abstractions, forms that resemble a bird, wants to approach the
purity of the form, of the concept of the bird instead of representing it (Oiseau dans
lspace, 1923)
Context:
- Several artists who tried abstraction are victims of this legal definition of the
epochs art
- in France (since the Age of Reason) the culture of the exhibition rooms where a jury
decides what is good art makes more and more modern artists be refused
- in the US (as a backlash): exhibitions where we dont refuse anything, sufficient to
pay 5 dollars (so Duchamp sends his fountain there in order to test the limits)
Impact:
- From there (the Fountain) the concept becomes more important than the form, the
concept is at the heart of the art
- Duchamp incarnates the Modern, the rupture with his own time
Art and the ideologies
Context:
- Era of totalitarianisms (Hitler, etc) and these totalitarianisms had a very precise idea
of the definition of art (marked aesthetic)
- for Hitler: the moderns are generates (herbe rouge, etc)
(See Fascist Sculpture, The Boxer, Rome)
1916-1926:
- The Russian painting (avant-garde) at that time was included in Modern art, new/
the bolshevik revolution is also modern
- At the start the avant-garde socialists and artists were associated and then very
quickly this goes bad and artists have no more choice and must produce images at
the service of ideology
Painting is flat: examining the means of painting (1950s / 2nd part of American
expressionism)
- Once this examination is done we should arrive at a pure painting, to its own
essence
- To say that a painting is a plan (2D), its necessary to affirm the work of this plan
- Important because since the Renaissance theres a long tradition of illusion of
depth
Art as the experience of the spectator (The problem of observation)
- Petit djeuner sur lherbe by douard Manet: the spectator is integrated in the
painting: new
IMITATION
- In order to speak of abstraction its necessary to do a brief history of the mimesis
Origin of the concept of mimesis (Mimesis = idea of miming)
- School of Athens: School of philosophers, writers, scientists, etc. who made the
Golden Age of the Greek

- Raphael and others wanted to give rebirth to this epoch, the ideal of greeks and the
Roman epoch
- at the centre Platon (at the left) and Aristotle (at the right), why?
- For A. art must imitate and during these 2 millenniums we are going to reattach art
to imitation of the nature
Platon
- points upwards in the painting to the world of ideas
Reality is duality: 1. world of ideas 2. sensible world
- Sensible world only a pale copy of the world of ideas
- Its necessary to acknowledge that truth has a part in the sensible world
Metaphor: the world of the cave
- the sensible man (not the philosopher) would be in chains without ever seeing the
whole reality, doesnt see the ideas, the concepts, only the pale copies (shadows)
Art according to Platon
- In his ideal city, art is bad because artists rend us further from the truth
- The artist who paints a bed only does a pale copy of the concept of the bed, which
is very far from the idea of the bed
- But to Platon its still worse when the artists doesnt do a copy of a copy (bed
fabricated by the artisan is already a copy) but a sort of copy in his head, and adds
motives.
Aristotle
- The work of the artist is good because:
1. Painting gives us pleasure is the copy is good
2. The copy of an object allows us to learn an object
3. The Catharsis:
- it purifies our passions: we identify ourselves in the art, we experience the
emotions that are expressed in it, which empties us -> art has the capacity to heal
- Greek tragedies are symbolic of that: we identify to the spectacle, to the characters
rather than murdering someone
- But to be able to identify oneself the mimesis is necessary, its necessary to imitate
existent situations
2 methods of imitation
1. The grapes of Zeuxis
- Pharrasius the best painter because he had succeeded in deceiving the eye of
humans -> mimesis through imitation
2. The Virgins of Crotone
- Crotone selects the most beautiful ends of women in order to constitute and paint
the ideal of the most beautiful woman -> mimesis through election
3. Schma:
Empiricism: I observe the real and do something else
Innatism: Idea of the ideal in mind since birth
Impact:
Pere Borell, Del Caso, 1874

- A game on the ambiguity of deceiving the eye: the boy leaves the canvas because
he is real
Platons philosophy recovered by Christianise (Renaissance)
- A lot of Christendom in the Renaissance and Platon seen as being part of the
problem but having good intuition, recovery of Platon by Plotin and St. Augustin
Mimesis by election, notion of the ideal (takes us to innatism and idealism)
- Why can a certain mouth or nose (Crotone) constitute an ideal? The idea comes
from the head
- The ideal would come directly from the world of ideas and ideas are put into the
mind of the artist by God -> direct contact between the artist and God -> innatism/
idealism
Some big debates surrounding imitation
1. Pythagoras: Everything can be expressed in numbers, even beauty ->
establishment of proportion norms, etc.
2. Imitate the Greeks or nature?
- Greeks: closer to beauty, idea (Winkelman) that because they are the origin of
humanity, the woman/greek sculpture, is the closer to ideal beauty (copying old
sculptures)
- Nature: Da Vinci: Why copy something which already copies something when
nature is before us -> only nature is our authority
3. The question of concept: I must at first conceive in my head that which Im going
to paint before painting it. Idea of separating the concept from the realisation.
4. The question of the filter between reality and that which the artist paints (Tper
and the story of the donkey). Each artist will paint the same subject in different ways
from one another and each has his style, whatever he paints.
19th century: The crisis of imitation
Context: every sort of actuals and each defends their version of imitation
(Romantism, Academicism, etc.) BUT the invention of photography will deconstruct
all of that
Impact:
- The Realists (Grapes of Zeuxis) will be jeopardised and even attacked
- The Realists make a petition against photo because theyre embarrassed
- Because now with photo we can measure the lighting and not with painting
POST-IMPRESSIONISM
Fauvism
Vincent Van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows
Andr Derain, LEstaque
Matisse, Harmony in Red
Cubism

- Czanne wants to make something more durable so that impressionism has its
place and for him its the geometry (will influence Kandinsky)
- Small coloured volumes
- Putting warm colours over cold colours: has the effect of volume (ex: Victoire,
Czanne)
- Restricted colours: limited chromatic range, that which interests Czanne is the
space and not colour
- Braques colour palette retaken from Czanne (Georges Braque, Viaduct
lEstaque)
ABSTRACTION
Context (1900-1920)
- Frustration with Academicism, era of the impressionists
- Sort of societal imbalance after WW1
- Artists say that we live in a bad society
- The desire to rupture oneself with 2 millenniums of history with Abstract Art
Abstraction
Non-figurative art:
1. Non-objective art: has no preceding object, completely detached representation of
the real world
2. Abstract art: art which tends to withdraw itself from mimesis
WASSILY KANDINSKY (1866 - 1944) : THE FATHER
1896-1911: Formation / Affirmation
- Bourgeois environment: enters the universe of art, becomes a musician: incarnates
the paradigm music/art
- His art is degenerate according to nazis: art very influence by the rise of Nazism
- Does researches of laws in the campaign: art influenced by folklore and Russian
campaigns
- 30 years old: decides to become a painter: Beaux-Arts in Munich (artistic centre)
- Travels a lot and communicates: tries right away to federate, to create movements
between artists
1911-1914: Der Blaue Reiter
- Blaue Reiter vs. die Brcke (coms from architecture, around Kirschner): both sign
up in the German Expressionism

OTHER PIONEERS OF ABSTRACTION

Robert Delauney
Francis Picabia
Frantisek Kupka
Mikhail Larionov

Lyotard
on tient pour post-moderne lincrdulit lgard des mtarcits
Ce qui est dpend de ce que lon sait. - E. Gombrich
Les courtisanes, 1495, Carpaccio