Impressionism Vs Cubism Essay, Research Paper

Art, according to Webster?s Dictionary, is a human skill of expression of other objects by painting, drawing, and sculpture. People have used art as a form of expression for a long time. From the Mesopotamian era to the Classical Greeks and the present. Art is expressed in many different ways and styles, and is rapidly changing, one style replacing another. Impressionism and Cubism broke away from the traditional style of painting. They were both looking for a new way to express everyday life. Time is an important tool that is used in Cubism as well as Impressionism. This element is expressed in Claude Monet?s Sunrise and Pablo Picasso?s Man with a Violin in different ways.

Impressionists? works were not easily accepted in society. At the time, Impressionism was a radical departure from tradition. People thought of them as impressions, not real paintings. Forms in their pictures lost their clear outlines and became dematerialized, a re-creation of actual outdoor conditions. Traditional formal compositions were abandoned in favor of a more casual and less contrived disposition of objects. These artists abandoned the traditional landscape palette of muted greens, browns, and grays and instead painted in a lighter, sunnier, more vivid colors. The Impressionists abandoned the use of grays and blacks in shadows as inaccurate and used complementary colors instead. The Impressionists extended their new techniques to depict landscapes, trees, houses, and even urban street scenes and railroad stations. They painted real life landscapes as they saw them without idealization.

Cubism was a completely different style of art that no one had seen before. It was the style that came to challenge the principles of Renaissance painting as dramatically as Einstein?s theory of relativity had challenged Newtonian physics (Fiero 9). It is composed of geometrical shapes, abstraction and time. There are no specific colors or objects used. Cubists were looking for a different way to express human form as well as art in general. They provided what we could almost call a God’s-eye view of reality: every aspect of the whole subject, seen simultaneously in a single dimension. According to Fiero, the Cubist image, conceived as if one were moving around, above, and below the subject and even perceiving it from within, appropriated the fourth dimension-time itself. In a sense, Cubism is four-dimensional: depth, height, breath, and time, but seen all at once. It displays different viewpoints from different aspects. The object is taken and looked at in many perspectives and is represented that way on the canvas.

Monet?s painting Sunrise displays vivid color, which is commonly used among impressionists. The painting is of the sun rising over the lake, over looking the bay and the boats within. ?Sunrise is a patently a seascape; but the painting says more about how one sees than about what one sees. It transcribes the fleeting effects of light and the changing atmosphere of water and air into a tissue of small dots and streaks of color-the elements of pure perception? (Fiero 114). This painting is typical of its style because it captures light at that moment. The sun is rising and its color is projected to everything in its path. Monet seems to capture this beautiful moment with numerous brush strokes. One can almost point out where the vibrant colors were mixed directly on the canvas. Monet?s painting is typical of its style is because there are no defining lines, the images are blurred one can barely make out the boats in the background. Monet successfully obtains the light he was trying to portray.

In many of his early works Picasso used Impressionism. For the most part, his use of Impressionism was nothing more than a stepping stone to his later innovative Cubist designs. The aesthetics of tribal art combined with the lessons of Cezanne created the new style that would become known as Cubism. Picasso?s painting Man with a Violin is expressed with many different viewpoints all at once. This is the main characteristic that cubists focused on. The painting itself is very confusing and hard to understand from the first glance. One might wonder that perhaps that is what the artist was trying to do. It is an expression of life, and life as we know it, is not always clear. In the painting, we can see the different parts of the violin and the man, but it is not clear. The composition is extremely abstract which is common in Cubism. There are no specific colors used, but they seem to be cool and controlled. The best way to describe this painting would be as Fiero did, ?the comfortable, recognizable world of the senses disappeared beneath a scaffold of semitransparent planes and short, angular lines; ordinary objects were made to look as if they had exploded and been reassembled somewhat arbitrarily in bits and pieces.? One can not make out where the body stops and the violin begins. Picasso definitely captures the different perspectives displayed in his painting.

In impressionism as mentioned previously, time is important because the artists are trying to capture light at that time; what the images is like at that moment in time color and light. They try to express life as it is lived and light as it is seen. Cubism on the other hand uses time in another way. Cubism focuses more on movement and viewpoints. How ever, each movement and perspective takes time. As we see in the paintings Monet captures the time of light, how the objects looked in the light at that time, where Picasso is revealing all perspectives of the object at one time. The object has shifted in many movements, over time. Both of these styles do not pertain to the ?traditional? lines, Impressionism just uses blurred images, and Cubism uses abstract geometrical shapes. They each have a unique way of painting using their styles. Thus both use time, but in different perspectives.

Cubism and Impressionism were both different from art in the past, as people knew it. Both of the styles did not follow the traditional style. Each wanted a new way to express things, a new way to see the world. Impressionism and Cubism created a fresh way of looking at things and a new kind of painting that reflected a modern way of life. Paintings were no longer of the glamorous life; impressionists were painting landscapes urban landscape, nature as it was seen. Impressionism was more than just a departure from traditional ways; it changed the very nature of the way people think about art. Cubists painted objects and people, but from many different perspectives. Cubism was one of the most influential and revolutionary movements in art. It changed art because what was seen a single perspective was now viewed as every aspect of the whole subject, seen all in a single dimension. Both Cubism and Impressionism play an important role in the development of modern art. Each of these styles changed art over time. It took time for each of these styles to be accepted as well as understood.

In conclusion, art is no longer the dull portraits of the upper class. Art has a deeper meaning, and a different expression. It is expressed in many different styles, among these Impressionism and Cubism. Each of these styles were new to what people were accustomed to. It took time for them to be accepted in society. Both Cubism and Impressionism use the element of time uniquely. Impressionism captures time and light and Cubism displays perspectives all at one time. Art is interpreted differently from one person to the next. We may never understand what the artist had in mind, but that is what makes art so unique. As Picasso once stated ?The fact that for a long time cubism has not been understood . . . means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist.?