POST 4

Option #2: In the Challange of the Avant Garde book, Paul Wood writes that Impressionism is a "forgetful" art (p. 121). Why is Impressionism "forgetful"? Feel free to disscuss subject matter for specific works of art (either in the Cahllange of A-G book or Stokstad textbook) to support your point. Do you think that Impressionism is "forgetful" in relation to artistic technique or tradition? why or why not?

Paul Wood in "The Challange of the Avant Garde' (page 121) basically says, Impressionism is a "forgetful" art. What he means by this is not that people forget about the art, much like I thought this meant at first, but rather the Impressionistic painters are painting other things than what was really going on. For example there was a big civil war in France and many things were left in ruins, but instead of painting all the ruins and dwendeling on the horrific things in reality, they painted the ruins off to the side or not at all and almost made them look like they did not even exist. They almost were much like Escapist pieces, if you would rather say that. The artists looked forward into the future rather then thinking about what was going on, as the old saying goes "out of sight, out of mind", bringing me back to the "forgetful" phrase that Wood uses.
One artist I want to focus on is Monet, we talked about him in a couple lectures leading up to this post, but Monet left France during the war, and came back shortly after the war ended, before this all happened he painted the streets with people in them, and focused on how the light fell onto his subject matter. Monet kept this mindset when he came back to France, but no longer wanted to just paint everything, because the things he saw were disturbing.
The painting that I want to focus on is one that another painter at the time painted a different way around the same time, this painting is Monet's "The Tuileries" and compare it to Meissonier's "the ruins of Tuileries". In Monet's painting he puts the Tuileries off to the left and we can only see the un-harmed front portion of the building and he focuses his painting on the extravagent garden scecnery the surrounds this place, and there's a few people and life looks great and dandy, just like he remembered it before the war. Meissonier on the other hand, paints a picture from the inside of the Tuileries and shows you the rubble (which takes up a good third of the bottom of the painting), but to kind of emphasis how the impressionist painters of this time are "looking to the future" Meissonier paints the little statue of Victory just off the ledge of the balcony in the background, showing hope and aspiration, that though all this place is destryoed there is still a brighter tomorrow, almost.
The question is asked "Do you think that Impressionism is "forgetful" in relation to artistic technique or tradition? why or why not?" I do not think that Impressionism is "forgetful" in its relation to the artistic technique, BUT I do feel that it may be "forgetful" in it's relation to its tradition. The paintings still have that split second quality to them, you can see the hand of the artist, with the study of light and color still in play. But the tradition of Impressionism is to paint what you see in front of you, and not cover things up that you dont feel are "good" enough. I feel that a lot of the impressionist painters are all of a sudden painting what they think the viewers will like, which almost reads to me very UN Avant Garde. I take the Saint Simonian point of view when I think of Avant Garde and say that art is political, especially right after a war. It is not healthy for people to just over look the past, because if you don't study history then you're doomed to repeat it, so why hide ALL of the rubble? why shelter people from the things that are going on around them. It's ok to embrace the fact of things that just happened, as long as you are doing it in a healthy manner. So I think that Impressionism at this time is still following the artistic techniques, but is "forgetful" of its tradition, because it is forgeting what's going on around it.