01 realism gustave courbet

Do a time line of
Twentieth
Century Art
History

What is
Modern Art?
Objective: To explore what you
think Modern Art is.
(What is your opinion?)

Modern Art
Question #1:
What do you think it is?
Answer:
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Question #2:
How many modern artist can you
name?
Answer:
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Question:
What do you think are the
characteristics of Modern Art?
Answer:
--------------------------------------------
Question:
Which of the following paintings do
you think if a modern work of art?
DISCUSS.

Answer: A) B) C) D)
All of the
paintings are
modern art.
Question:
How can these four paintings all be
considered as modern art?

A) 1854 B) 1863
D) 1895C) 1959

REALISM
Artist included:
Gustave Courbet (1819 – 1877)
Honore Daumier (1808 – 1879)
Edgas Degas (1834 – 1917)
Henri Fantin Latour (1836 - 1904)
Edouard Manet (1832 – 1883)
Alfred Menzel (1815 – 1905)
James Tissot (1836 – 1902)
Keywords:
Anti-bourgeois defiance
Labourer
The real
Social critque
Contemporary nude
Outrage
Realists attempted to record the world as they saw it and, as a result their work was solidly focused on its subject matter
and its emotional and social significance. In times of great disparity between social classes the results were always likely
to be provocative. Realists were interested in freeing art from social conventions and exploring how society shapes
people’s lives.
Courbet’s manifesto La Realisme claimed that art should be an objective record of the world and that it
should be guided by the artist’s vision at the expense of hallowed notions about ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’ subject
matter. Realism was a concocted attempt to liberate art and the artists from bourgeois taste. It drew inspiration from
Romanticism but rejected Romanticism’s emphasis on the individual artist’s feelings. Courbet painted workers in ‘real’
nature, not in idealised natural landscapes, and they had the appearance of recognisable men and women – genuine
labourers. He also rejected many of the painterly techniques associated with fine art; his paintings began to look as
rough as his subjects.
Other artists did not see their own versions of Realism as part of a broader programme of social and political
change. Manet’s realism was distinctly bourgeois and no less shocking – despite the lack of political motivation or
ideological commitment – simply by virtue of painting what he saw.
A mid to late 19th century movement, Realism claimed that the artist should represent the world as it is, even if this meant
breaking artistic and social conventions. The subjects of many Realist paintings were considered immoral in their day
because they broke with accepted standards of ‘good taste’. Realism was at its strongest in France and it most important
painter-advocates were Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet.

"The world
comes to be
painted at my
studio" Courbet

Gustave Courbet French b.1819 - 1877
(1850s)

Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers (destroyed during WW2)
1850, oil on canvas, 165 cm × 257 cm

Gustave Courbet,
The Artist's Studio: A real allegory summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life,
1885, oil on canvas, 361 cm × 598 cm, Musee d’Orsay, Paris

Realists aspired to paint what they saw, even what was dirty and unpleasant. The Painter’s Studio can be read as
Courbet’s critique of this failure to engage with the real world as he saw it: the artist’s studio is grimy and crowded, but
the painting in his canvas shows a beautiful landscape which bears no relation to the world in which the artists lives.
Courbet was also showing himself to be both a master of Realist painting and the style he is rejecting.

Khan Academy_The Artist's Studio by Gustave Courbet
The Great Artists - Romantics & Realists - Courbet
• allegory
• ˈalɪɡ(ə)ri/
• noun
• noun: allegory; plural noun: allegories
• a story, poem, or picture which can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning,
typically a moral or political one.
Listen to theses and discuss

The enormous Studio is without doubt Courbet's most mysterious composition.
However, he provides several clues to its interpretation: "It's the whole world coming
to me to be painted", he declared, "on the right, all the shareholders, by that I mean
friends, fellow workers, art lovers. On the left is the other world of everyday life, the
masses, wretchedness, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, people who
make a living from death".
In the first group, those on the right, we can recognise the bearded profile of the art
collector Alfred Bruyas, and behind him, facing us, the philosopher Proudhon. The
critic Champfleury is seated on a stool, while Baudelaire is absorbed in a book. The
couple in the foreground personify art lovers, and near the window, two lovers
represent free love.
On the side of "everyday life", we find a priest, a merchant, a hunter who somewhat
resembles Napoleon III, and even an unemployed worker and a beggar girl symbolising
poverty. We can also see the guitar, the dagger and the hat, which, together with the
male model, condemn traditional academic art.
In this vast allegory, truly a manifesto painting, each figure has a different meaning.
And in the middle of all this stands Courbet himself, flanked by benevolent figures: a
female muse, naked like the Truth, a child and a cat. In the centre, the painter
presents himself as a mediator. Courbet thus affirms the artist's role in society in an
enormous scene on the scale of a history painting. When faced with the rejection of
his painting, intended for the 1855 Universal Exhibition, Courbet built a "Pavilion of
Realism" at his own expense. Here, outside the official event, he organised his own
exhibition, which also included A Burial at Ornans, so that his work could be available
to the whole of society.

A real allegory? Courbet's contradiction
The title of Courbet's painting contains a contradiction: the words "real" and "allegory" have opposing
meanings. In Courbet's earlier work, "real" could be seen as a rejection of the heroic and ideal in favour of the
actual. Courbet's "real" might also be a coarse and unpleasant truth, tied to economic injustice. The "real"
might also point to shifting notions of morality.
In contrast, an "allegory" is a story or an idea expressed with symbols. Is it possible that Courbet is using his
title to alert the viewer to contradictions and double meanings in the image? Look, for instance, at the dim
paintings that hangs on the rear wall of his Paris studio. These large landscapes seem to form a continuous
horizon line from panel to panel. They dissolve enough so that we are not sure if they are paintings, or if they
are perhaps windows that frame the landscape beyond. Is it "real" or is it a representation? Courbet seems to
muddy the distinction and allow for both.
The artist
The artist is immediately recognizable in the centre of the canvas. His head is cocked back and his absurd beard
is thrust forward at the same haughty angle seen in Bonjour Monsieur Courbet. But here he is assessing and
just possibly admiring the landscape that he is in the process of painting. The central composition is a trinity of
figures (four, if you count the cat).
Gustave
Courbet,
La Rencontre
(Bonjour
Monsieur
Courbet), 1854,
oil on canvas,
129 x 149 cm
The Artist's Studio,
Artist and model
(detail)

Model as muse
To Courbet's right stands a nude model. Note that her dress is strewn at her feet. There is nothing exceptional
here; after all, this is an artist's studio, and models are often nude. However, Courbet does not look look in her
direction, as he would if she were actually posing for him. He doesn't need to. He is, after all, painting an
unpopulated landscape. Oddly, the direction of the gaze is reversed. The model directs her attention to align
with Courbet's, not vice-versa. She gazes at the landscape he paints. In the realm of the "real," she functions as
the model, but as "allegory," she maybe truth or liberty according to the political readings of some scholars and
she may be the muse of ancient Greek myth, a symbol of Courbet's inspiration (and this particular model may
well have inspired the artist, since they were lovers.)
Youth as innocence
The boy to the left of the artist is also a reference. The smallest of the three central figures, he looks up
(literally) to Courbet's creation with admiration. The boy is unsullied by the illusions of adulthood, he sees the
truth of the world, and he represented an important goal for Courbet—to un-learn the lessons of the art
academy. The sophistication of urban industrial life, he believed, distanced artists from the primal truth of
nature. Above all, Courbet sought to return to the pure, direct sight of a child. The cat, by the way is often read
as a reference to independance or liberty.
Cast of characters
The entire, rather crowded canvas, is divided into two large groups of people. In the group on the left, we see
fairly rough types described. They are a cast of stock characters: a woodsman, the village idiot, a Jew, and
others. There are several other allusions, such as the inclusion of the current ruler of France, Louis-Napoléon,
but let's focus on the theme at hand. Here then, are the country folk whom Courbet faces.
Left side (detail)

On the opposite side of the canvas are, in contrast, a far more handsome and well-dressed party. Gathered at
the right lower corner of the painting are Courbet's wealthy private collectors and his urbane friends. In the
canvas's extreme lower right sits Charles Baudelaire, the influential poet who was a close friend of the painter.
Is this composition familiar? Courbet is engaged in the act of painting, or as we might say, he is creating a
landscape. Could the reference be to God the creator of nature? The composition seems directly related to the
traditional composition of the New Testament story, the Last Judgment. Think of Giotto's Last Judgment fresco
on the back wall of the Arena Chapel in Padua (1305-06), or Michelanglo's Last Judgment painted on the far
wall of the Sistine Chapel (1534-42). In those early paintings, the blessed (those that were on their way to
heaven) were on the right side of Christ (our left), and the damned (those on their way to Hell) were shown on
Christ's left (our right).
Right side (detail)
Giotto,
Last Judgment on the west
wall, c. 1305, fresco
(Arena/Scrovegni Chapel,
Padua)

Courbet the creator
Courbet has placed himself in the position of creator. But does he want us to use a capital "C"? What then of
the model/muse? In the place of the blessed on the left are the country folk. Again, the pure morality of nature
is referenced. On the right side in place of the damned are the urban sophisticates. Again, the notion of the
corruption of the city is present. And in the bottom right corner, where Michelangelo placed Satan himself, we
find, amusingly, Courbet's close friend, the poet Baudelaire, author of The Flowers of Evil.
Finally, you should note the crucified figure partly hidden behind
the easel. Indeed, Courbet referred to himself as a kind of martyr
(look at such paintings as Self-portrait as Wounded Man). He
created these satirical portrayals of himself as a martyred saint
because of his "suffering" at the metaphorical hands of the French
art critics.
Essay by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker

The younger Courbet admired Delacroix (and vice versa), but had no time for all the
whimsical make believe and classical illusion found in paintings of the Romantic
period. Courbet wanted to get real, and paint ordinary subjects that the Academy and
polite society considered to be vulgar, like the poor.
Gustave Courbet
After The Hunt, 1859
oil on canvas, 236.2 x 186.1 cm
Eugene Delacroix
The Lion Hunt, 1861,
Oil on canvas, 76.5 x 98.5 cm
Make a comparison

Art of the past is not always a safe bet. It is not the remit of biscuit tins,
calendars and chocolate boxes as it gets repackages and presented to new
generations to consume it. In its original context and beyond it raises
pertinent questions that are relevant today as they were in the immediacy
of their creation.
The painting you are about to see
Question:
What questions does this painting raise?
What might the title of this painting be?
How might the content of this painting differ if it had been made in 2016?
Can you think of and give examples that would be contemporary equivalants
of this painting?
Caution:

Before you move on and discover
more about this painting, you
probably need to discuss it
further.
Question:
What questions does this painting raise?
Caution:

Gustave Courbet
L'Origine du
monde
(Origin of the
World)
1866
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
46 cm × 55 cm
Musée d'Orsay,
Paris

L'origine de L'Origine du
monde Radio 4 (30 mins)
Before watching Marina Abramovic
and Tracey Emin give their take on
The Origin of The World, listen to this
Radio 4 programme about that was
broadcast on the 25th August 2016.
Marina Abramovic on Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World (1 minute)
Tracey Emin on Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World (3 minutes)

Gustave Courbet
La belle Irlandaise
(Portrait of Jo)
Joanna Hiffernan,
is thought to
probably be the
model for
L'Origine du
monde

In February 2013, Paris Match
reported that Courbet expert
Jean-Jacques Fernier had
authenticated a painting of a
young woman's head and
shoulders as the upper section
of L'Origine du monde which
according to some was severed
from the original work. Fernier
has stated that because of the
conclusions reached after two
years of analysis, the head will
be added to the next edition of
the Courbet catalogue
raisonne. The Musee d’Orsay
has indicated that L'Origine du
Monde was not part of a larger
work.

The first owner of The Origin of the World, who probably commissioned it, was the
Turkish-Egyptian diplomat Khalil-Bey (1831-1879). A flamboyant figure in Paris Society
in the 1860s, he put together an ephemeral but dazzling collection devoted to the
celebration of the female body, before he was ruined by his gambling debts. Exactly
what happened to the painting after that is not clear. Until it joined the collections of
the Musée d'Orsay in 1995 – by which time it belonged to the psychoanalyst Jacques
Lacan – The Origin of the World epitomised the paradox of a famous painting that is
seldom actually seen.
Courbet regularly painted female nudes, sometimes in a frankly libertine vein. But in
The Origin of the World he went to lengths of daring and frankness which gave his
painting its peculiar fascination. The almost anatomical description of female sex organs
is not attenuated by any historical or literary device. Yet thanks to Courbet's great
virtuosity and the refinement of his amber colour scheme, the painting escapes
pornographic status. This audacious, forthright new language had nonetheless not
severed all links with tradition: the ample, sensual brushstrokes and the use of colour
recall Venetian painting and Courbet himself claimed descent from Titian and Veronese,
Correggio and the tradition of carnal, lyrical painting.
The Origin of the World, now openly displayed, has taken its proper place in the history
of modern painting. But it still raises the troubling question of voyeurism.

01 realism gustave courbet

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