Thursday, September 20, 2012

Modern Impressionist Artists: A Closer View

By Casandra Newton


Modern impressionist artists can be considered as the founders of contemporary painting. It first started in Paris in the 1860s but it later on spread to many other parts of the world. Coming up with a finely finished and detailed painting was what conventional art required but these people shunned away from this. Their main aim was to capture the temporary, sensory effect of a scene.

Their paintings appeared to the viewer in a momentary way. Such creativity could not be achieved in studios. Most of them were thus forced to move to the streets and countryside where they could capture everything. To convey representations, their style of work did not actually require reality.

Optical effects of light were employed to try and paint a picture of the passing time, changes in weather, climatic and other shifts in the atmosphere. By using canvas as their primary material, these painters achieved a lot. To come up with successful paintings, they used slackened works of brush. Pure and strong colors could only be used from bleached palettes.

Apart from that, they also insisted on direct conveyance of a general notion of a particular view, usually outdoors. They used primary colors and short brushstrokes to symbolize the appearance of mirrored light. Their main wish was to capture the artist's view of the subject rather than the subject itself.

In their paintings, painters were now allowed to include a wide range of things in the surrounding environment. Unlike before, paint was not given time to dry but instead, new paint was just applied on it. Apart from this process allowing formation of softer edges, the applied colors were allowed to dry more naturally.

After watching their counterparts walk away from the normal practices, musicians also decided to defy traditional forms of song composition. They started employing the use of more dissonant harmonies that varied in arrangement to convey personal moods and feelings. This gave them the freedom to propose feelings and places through indefinite beats and dynamic, shifting harmonies. What they wanted to achieve was using light and colors to vary tone, tempo and pitch.

Next on line were the writers and poets. They started using imagery and symbolism as an effective way of reaching their audiences. Characterization, which had been there since ages, was not in itself the efficient means of painting characters in a poem or story. They started looking at the mental pressures of humanity instead of just focusing on the physical outlook. Apart from just describing real life events, poetry started to seek answers to some human feelings.

Impressionism paved way for artists to expand their minds towards a universal thinking. From this, they found freedom to continue with their new experiments and borrowing ideas from the conventional forms. It is because of this reason that the world has changed tremendously.

There is no doubt that modern impressionist artists were the revolutionists behind present day art. They did not just influence painting alone but they also breathed a new fire in music and writing. Their action was a blessing to the world as a whole.




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