Monet Vs. Degas: Impressionist Aesthetics Essay

This paper will discuss two iconic impressionist artist, Vincent Van Gogh and Edgar Degas. I will give details on these two artist lives, and see how they use impressionism to make their beautiful paintings like, Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” and Edgar Degas’ “Dancers in Blue”. I will explain how Lucy Lipids 3-pronged analysis can apply to both of these paintings, and how a few of the Gestalt Principles can be seen in these painting.

But the artists who would become known as the Impressionists (including Claude Monet, Mary 5,Camille Pissarro) looked at art a little differently—they wanted to make art as truly

Pierre Bonnard was born on October 3rd, 1867 at Fontenay-aux-Roses, a village outside Paris. He was the son of prominent official of the French Ministry of War. Due to his insitnace Bonnard studied law at Sorbonne from 1885 to 1888. During the year of 1887 Bonnard enrolled in evening classes at Académie Julian, which was an art school in Paris. While at the art school he and four of his friends joined together and formed group which was known as Les Nabis. They used this group to integrate art into daily life; they did this by combining nature with personal aesthetic and symbolism. They used posters, prints, book illustrations and paintings to show this. In 1981 Bonnard won his first competition which was making a poster for French champagne, also in 1891 Bonnard showed his work at an annual exhibit at the Society of Independent Artists. This is where he started to make his mark in the artist community. He didn’t become an established and successful artist until 1896; this is when he had his first solo art show.

By the time he was seventeen, Monet was already making money from his work and had won a local reputation as a caricaturist. Skillful and amusing, his caricatures were displayed in the window of a local frame maker, Monsieur Gravier, where they drew crowds of appreciative viewers. Gravier also displayed paintings by the landscape painter Eugene Boudin, who was an old friend of his. Monet's development of friendship and informal tutelage of Boudin proved to be formative for Monet's future direction as a landscape painter. (Gordon, 38)

Claude Monet was the leader of impressionist painting movement. Manet, Cezanne, Degas, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, gave art the ability to

French history is filled with an amazing culture that consists of beautiful architecture and delicious food. One aspect of French culture that stands out is its Art. Among the famous artists that have contributed over the years, one artists name stands out among the rest, Claude Monet. Claude Monet is known for being one of the influential artists to introduce impressionism. In a style not previously before painted, impressionism depicted a landscape or scene by creating illusion through the use of shading and coloring. Traditional painting was produced in an art studio, but impressionism was a unique. It allowed the artist to shed the use of a studio and step out into nature. Monet and other famous artists launched this new style of art that challenged traditional painting and would forever change French culture and influence art for many years to come.

Edgar Degas and Claude Monet used different techniques and styles in their paintings. Monet has been described as “The Driving force behind Impressionism”. He studied the reflection of the light and its effects on the colors and also he preferred to paint in indoor places. Edgar Degas was different form another impressionist painters, his style reflected his respect to his old masters. Also, he preferred to paint in outdoors places. Moreover, Degas’s art style depended on the depiction of the art movement especially in his dancers drawings. Also, he used oil paintings and pastels in his drawings.

Claude was born in Paris, France in the year 1840. Despite the fact that Paris was his birthplace, Claude only spent 5 years of his childhood there as he and his family moved to Le Havre, a port town in Normandy. Claude developed a love for art in his early childhood and was well known in his town for drawing caricatures of his community members. His mother was highly encouraged his talent whereas Claude’s father wanted his son to become a businessman. Living in Le Havre, Claude had many opportunities to strengthen his talent such as meeting Eugene Boudin who was a local landscape artist and introduced Claude to landscape painting outdoors and set him on the track to his future success. In 1859 Claude moved back to Paris to pursue his career in art. During his time in Paris he was enrolled in the Academie Suisse and was influenced by the paintings of Barbizon School. Other great influences on his art were his friends Charles Gleyre, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frederic Bazille as well as Johann Barthold Jongkind who was a well-known landscape painter of the

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born October 25, 1881 in the city of Málaga, Spain on the Mediterranean Sea. His parents, José Ruiz Blasco and Maria Picasso, were both from Spain. His father from northern Spain and his mother from Picasso’s birthplace. It was not unusual for people to take both parents family names. At the time of Picasso’s birth, his was was an art teacher in Málaga, which obviously greatly influenced Picasso. It was when the family moved to Barcelona when Picasso was 15 years old and his father took a job as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts that really blossomed his interest in painting. He was an exceptional artist at a very young age, as displayed in A Man In a Cap, 1895 (Picasso, Pg. 14). He painted this painting when he was only 14 years old, and it depicts a beggar on the street. I particularly like this because he painted something that caught his eye as a young boy.

Through a series of solid strokes of paint in his canvas, Monet managed to present society with a completely new outlook, literally, on one’s visual aspect. Claude-Oscar Monet, famous French painter, was a highly innovative artist back in the 1800s. His works inspired other artists who followed suite and teamed up promptly with Monet, soon enough gaining for themselves the title of “The Impressionists.” He contributed not only to the art culture, but also to the entirety of society through his paintings as if telling the world not to be afraid of anything different and emphasized the importance to look at things with deeper perception other than that which our vision enables us to see. Claude-Oscar Monet is also known as the father of Impressionism,

In the year of 1840 little did France, let alone the world, know that it was a year to be put in the history books. On this beautiful year a man of great recognition in the art world was born. The founding father of Impressionism, Claude Monet. He had been a painter of a new style. One of his paintings titled “Across the Meadow” was simply one of the art pieces among a multitude of other phenomenal impressionist works he had completed.

Andre Derain was born in a small town in Northern France called Chatou -- which at the time was an artists colony near Paris -- on Saturday, June 10, 1880. His dad was a successful pastry chef and town council member. As such, he received a middle class education, although it would appear he was unhappy as a student as he later stated “the teachers, ushers and pupils were a far more bitter memory for me than the darkest hours of my military career. ” At age 15 he began to take painting lessons from an old friend of his father and Paul Cezanne, La Noe.

Claude Monet was born in Paris in 1840 and would become known as one of France’s famous painters. Monet is often attributed with being the leading figure of the style of impressionism; but this was not always the case. Monet started out his career as a caricaturist, showing great skill. Eventually “Monet began to accompany [Eugène] Boudin as the older artist . . . worked outdoors, . . . this “truthful” painting, Monet later claimed, had determined his path as an artist.” Monet’s goal took off as his popularity grew in the mid 1870s after he switched from figure painting to the landscape impressionist style. William Seitz supports this statement through his quote, “The landscapes Monet painted at Argenteuil between 1872 and 1877 are

Beyond the simple fact that one (post-impressionism) cannot have existed without the other (impressionism) the revolutionary technique shared by both movements; small, generally circular or curved strokes, brilliant colors, use of light, and subject matter that reached beyond the traditional scope ties them together in a unique and easily identifiable manner. One cannot view Monet’s Impressions: soleil levant and Van Gogh’s Starry Night without instantly seeing the undeniable similarities; both artists’ use of light and deliberate brush strokes leave the viewer with little doubt about the artistic movements from which they came.

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus defines beauty and the artist's comprehension of his/her own art. Stephen uses his esthetic theory with theories borrowed from St. Thomas Aquinas and Plato. The discourse can be broken down into three main sections: 1) A definitions of beauty and art. 2) The apprehension and qualifications of beauty. 3) The artist's view of his/her own work. I will explain how the first two sections of his esthetic theory relate to Stephen. Furthermore, I will argue that in the last section, Joyce is speaking of Stephen Dedalus and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as his art.