Дмитрий Хантиль - Impressionism

Impressionism (French impressionnisme ← impression “impression“) is one of the largest trends in art in the last third of the XIX — early XX century, originated in France and then spread around the world. Representatives of Impressionism sought to develop methods and techniques that made it possible to capture the real world in its mobility and variability in the most natural and vivid way, to convey their fleeting impressions. The basis of the impressionistic method, which can be described as the quintessence of painting, is the perception and depiction of objects of the artist’s surrounding reality not autonomously, but in relation to the surrounding spatial and light-air environment: reflexes, glare, warm-cold relations of light and shadow; more broadly, to capture space and time itself. This is both the strengths and weaknesses of the impressionistic method. By focusing on tonal relationships and valera, the painters weakened the drawing, composition, sense of form and materiality of the depicted objects. Combining color and shape is a difficult task. Before that, in the history of art, its solution was given to few; maybe only to P. P. Rubens. The discord between color and form has become a stumbling block for the next generation of post—Impressionist artists. Usually, the term “impressionism“ refers to the current in painting, although the ideas and creative methods of Impressionism have found their embodiment in other types of art — literature, music. Of the related trends of decadence, symbolism is closest to Impressionism. However, both impressionism and symbolism (as well as decadence) are not stylistic categories, they only reflect some aspects of the creative method. Therefore, many artists, starting to work as symbolists (and in a completely academic manner of writing), then switched to the impressionistic method. The term “impressionism“ originated with the light hand of the critic of the magazine “Le Charivari“ Louis Leroy, who published his feuilleton about the Salon of the Outcasts under the title “Exhibition of Impressionists“ (L’Exposition des impressionnistes), taking as a basis the title of the painting by Claude Monet “Impression. The Rising Sun“ (Impression, soleil levant, 1872). The canvas was exhibited at the first exhibition of the Independents in Paris in 1874. At first, the term had a disparaging, even mocking, character, indicating a corresponding attitude towards artists who wrote in a “careless“ manner, but then it took root and acquired a categorical meaning.