Chap. 30 - Edouard Manet

Edouard Manet, French Painter
1832 - 1883
There is only one true thing: instantly paintwhat you see. When you've got it, you've got it.When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.
—Edouard Manet

Edouard Manet was born on January 23, 1832 in Paris. He is often identified with the "Impressionists," and was influenced by them. However, because of the Paris art world's generally hostile regard for Impressionism, he chose not to exhibit with them. He preferred to show his work in the more conservative exhibitions sponsored by the French government.Manet learned to paint in the traditional style, but his work became more spontaneous after his exposure to Claude Monet and the other "Impressionists." He used expressive outline, severe lighting contrasts, bold color and rich texture to portray the world around him.Manet scandalized the people of Paris with a number of works containing nudes painted in bold poses with direct, outward gazes. While it was popular during his time to paint scenes from the Bible and ancient history, Manet painted scenes from 19th Century history, including one work featuring the execution of Emperor Maximillian of Mexico in 1867.

Realism

Edouard Manet. Woman with Fans (Nina de Callias). 1873. Oil on canvas. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France.

Surprised Nymph. (Nymphe surprise). 1861. Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina

I present to you Manet

My writings (continuation)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel


Philosophy of Romanticism
(chap 27)

In the romantic period, the most known philosophers were German. Some like Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) were influenced by idealists as were Locke and Descartes which thought that “the truth of empirical experience were not self-evident” and that “the truth of the mind were not clear and distinct” . However Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was the most influential philosopher of that time. From his point of view, the world merged of a single divine nature, that he called “spirit” or “absolute mind”. He created a dialectic which consists of a condition (“thesis”) that is put against the opposite condition (“antithesis”), which results in a synthesis. At the end it went all towards the “ultimate goal of spiritual freedom”. Reality was all operating with his dialectic.
The Philosophy of history (1807) was his works brought together with the notes of his students (because his profession was being a teacher at the University of Berlin). For him “the essence of spirit is freedom”. He used his dialectic to explain that human beings possess free will, his “thesis”; his “antithesis” is that free will is used over property, but limited by the universal will and the synthesis being individual coming into harmony with universe duty. This last stage which is real freedom was used in the late nineteenth century nationalism and economic theories of Karl Marx.
After Hegel there was a British scientist called Charles Darwin (1809-1882) also viewed nature as always changing. In his early ages he was mostly working on biological and geological data. The theory of Evolution as maybe some people think, did not originate form Darwin himself, other philosophers have thrown such an idea. The idea that all forms of plant life have evolved from a single primeval plant like Goethe and the French biologist Jean Batiste de Lamarck (1744-1829) said. Although the idea did not originate from him, he was the one that demonstrated the theory by doing all of the explanations to let people understand the meaning of it.


Romantic Music
(chap 29)

Poets, painters and composers all started a new way to write words, music or paint. They changed the “rules” of the classical world. It metamorphosed to a more expressive form of art in all three domains. They wanted their works to have a much bigger emotional impact. For the music portion of art this could happen thanks to the improvement of the instruments from the time. Trumpets and tuba gained pitches, clarinet and flute changed to facilitate tuning and fingering, violin gained greater power and piano increased in brilliance in tone and greater expressiveness. In the times of Mozart and Haydn orchestras were pretty small from what we know now. From the Romantic period it has changed. Since instruments were improved, the sound and varieties of instruments were lasrger, which led to the formation of bigger orchestras in the nineteenth century.
Most of the composer’s pieces were representing themes of love and death or nature and nature’s moods. The inspiration of their works were current events, heroic subjects and from legends and histories heard from their native land. In all compositions, small or more complex, the purpose was to obtain a perfect union between music and poetry. Composers were usually also performers. Some of them started to write pieces that only few musicians could play, they were virtuoso pieces. One example of this was Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) a fabulous violinist. He didn’t even want to publish those pieces; he just performed them like no other violinist could. But eventually those pieces got published maybe not all and are now available. Some even thought that he gained his virtuosity by a pact with the devil.

I present to you
Jascha Heifetz plays Paganini Caprice No. 24

Programme 5
Concert of Nicolò Paganini,

Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, 6 July 1832