The painting in the header image is one of Monet’s Water Lillies series, which is probably some of his most famous and identifiable artworks. The one I chose is the one housed at the St. Louis Art Museum, which is my personal happy place. It is a HUGE painting and it has its own room with a bench. It’s incredible to be able to get close to it and look at the brush strokes, but also just to sit there and take in the calm. I think we all could use a little calm.
Art and literature go through many, many changes between the 1870s and the nineteen-teens. It’s probably the most active and experimental period that I can think of (and it’s also the reason that I was waiting on the new HD screens). Please make sure that you scroll through the art crawl that I would normally go through with you guys, but do so after watching the Crash Course below:
And these:
Finally, when you get a second, put on your headphones and enjoy this walking tour of the SLAM’s Millet and Modern Art exhibit. This is where I, in a perfect world without COVID-19, would be over spring break. I’m very thankful they made their walking tour audio available with a tour of the exhibit.
When you guys have viewed all of the resources, please post one question in the comments, and feel free to answer your classmates’ questions as well. I’ll chime in, too.
Dr. Astorian's AP Consortium 
dan kerik (@dkerik4)
March 27, 2020
Where is the art crawl?
Laura Astorian
March 27, 2020
Sorry about that! I forgot to include it: http://www.pptpalooza.net/PPTs/EHAP/EarlyModernEuropeanArt.ppt
Taze Lamb
March 27, 2020
Why is it that the popularity of impressionist artwork began to rise along with the social upheaval of the turn of the century? Is there a link between the two? Not just the subject of the artwork but the style of the art itself.
Laura Astorian
March 28, 2020
That’s a *really* good question – we’ll look a little bit at that when we get to post WWI art and literature. You kind of answered your own question – there’s a HUGE link between the two. As life became more uncertain, art reflected that in being less realistic and less specific. A big reason that Impressionist art remains so popular is because it’s beautiful escape. Post-impressionism and the direction that we go after WWI stops being about beautiful escapism and starts taking on a more exaggerated and disturbing, almost discordant tone. Painting reality is next to impossible, because post WWI life was so unlike what anyone had ever experienced. No one knew what to do, but they knew how they felt, and art becomes a reflection of how they feel.
Neha Vennapusa
March 28, 2020
Why did Degas refuse to call himself anything thing other than a realistic painter despite being really stylistic? Was it because he was working during the transition to acceptance of impressionist art?
Laura Astorian
March 28, 2020
That could be part of it – to lend the movement some credibility. Part of me wonders if it was because he was looking at something other than shape and structure and form. Is there something else he could’ve been focusing on trying to capture?
karinachatha
March 31, 2020
The art seems very subversive- intentionally subversive. What was the reasoning behind it? Was it new times and wanting to accept changes in society? Or was the art forcing society to change with it?
Laura Astorian
March 31, 2020
That’s a really tough question – I think a little from column A, a little from column B. By the 1930s, Hitler held exhibitions of art from this era as scandalous and examples of depravity to contrast with good German landscape art. Guess what exhibit got more visitors. 😃
dan kerik (@dkerik4)
April 1, 2020
Would you say that these emerging impressionist and post-impressionist artists were more focused on being different than their predecessors than actually painting what came to their minds? Also, did the use of drugs among these young artists influence these new artistic perspectives?
Laura Astorian
April 1, 2020
I think for sure there was an emphasis on difference in their community. Many of them, especially in France, lived pretty bohemian lifestyles that pushed back against social norms of the time. Drug use wasn’t too much of a thing unless you count laudanum maybe for pain. Their drug of choice was alcohol – especially absinthe, whose herbal properties were rumored to cause hallucinations. That’s why it was illegal to import or make absinthe in the US until recently until someone realized that the hallucinations were just rumors for the most part.