Self-Portrait, 1889, Vincent van Gogh (National Gallery of Art)
As in most revolutions, the upheaval wrought on the Paris art scene in the early 1870s by brash young impressionists like Monet and Degas spawned a new generation who saw the movement as only a starting point. Painters like Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cézanne absorbed and extended this brave new world of art by imposing intellectual order to impressionism and investing it with emotional and psychological intensity.
Join David Gariff, senior lecturer at the National Gallery of Art, in an exploration of the work of the painters who captured people, the seasons, weather, and even times of day in quickly applied, color-drenched brushstrokes that startled with their vividness. Then investigate their legacy in the subsequent generation of artists who absorbed and extended the lessons of the impressionist revolution, paving the way for 20th-century abstraction.
Sept. 7 Edouard Manet: The Painter of Modern Life
Manet’s importance rests on his role as the seminal painter who most fully embraced what Baudelaire called the "heroism of modern life," and whose formal innovation and provocative subject matter inspired the impressionists.
Sept. 14 The Impressionist Revolution 1874–1886: Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Pissarro
Trace the major artists, works, and ideas explored in the series of impressionist exhibitions held from 1874 to 1886, in which this avant-garde movement established new definitions of the modern and new methods of seeing and making art.
Sept. 21 Van Gogh and Gauguin: A Turbulent Creativity
The two forerunners of modern expressionist painting were linked in a volatile relationship. In Gauguin, van Gogh saw an individual capable of producing an "art of the future," which would speak to modern society. Van Gogh’s powerful, heartfelt canvases echoed throughout Gauguin’s career even until his final days in the South Seas.
Sept. 28 Cézanne and Seurat: The Eye in Service to the Mind
Cézanne and Seurat sought to systematize the randomness of impressionism and to find an analytical way of seeing the world. Their paintings express a new vocabulary of art and a new interpretation of the nature of visual experience.
4 sessions
World Art History Certificate core course: Earn 1 credit
